Kunoichi and Guardian
by Giada Luna
Summary: Kunoichi: Devastated by Neji's death, Tenten tries to navigate life in a world without him with one goal in mind: to protect those precious to her and to rejoin him in death. Guardian: Neji died with one regret: leaving her behind. Now he watches over her, trying to protect her from the darkness that threatens to keep them apart. See profile for pairings. Dark!Tenten
1. I: She Can't

_A/N: Kishimoto owns Naruto, and all of his Narutoygoodness. I am just coping with having no updates on Wednesdays.  
Apparently I am having coping issues, as my mini fics have been much darker than my usual style.  
__This is an angst/hurt/comfort [slight]AU fic, friends, set in the post-war canon Narutoverse where Tenten's life takes a dark turn when she can't cope with the loss of Neji.  
__Her choices dictate the creative license taken in this story and at least one non-canon pairing. _

_Intended to be a one-shot, this story will be published as a series of small vignettes of varying length of less than 1K, and up to 3K-4K. Planning on 20 installments, 15 of which are largely done. This is the first story I will be publishing/previewing on Tumblr as well. Thanks for coming along for the ride!_

* * *

**Kunoichi  
****I. She Can't.**

* * *

She can't go to the gravesite.

She has never had a problem visiting the cemetery.

Konoha honors the fallen with a reverence and respect. She has always found the cemetery to be peaceful and reassuring.

The Will of Fire is cherished and fostered in all of Konoha's residents, shinobi and civilian alike. To be laid to rest having given one's very lifeblood for the village meant that your pulse thrummed on in the collective of those who lived, and your soul soared in the skies above the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

She has never feared death.

She still doesn't.

She is a shinobi of Konoha and death and loss is as much a part of life as anything else.

She always assumed that when it was her turn to sleep in the earthen embrace of Konoha, it would be with a heart stilled to peace by the knowledge she lived every day of her life defending and protecting her home and her people until her last breath at whatever age death came to greet her.

She has no fear of her own mortality.

But she still can't go to the grave.

She can't go and see his name hewn in the permanence and irrevocability of stone.

She can't face the inscription bookending his life from the day of his birth to the day death that came far too soon.

She can't stand over the grass knowing he lies buried directly below her feet, in restful repose having given everything he was for Konoha.

She can't accept the totality and finality of his sacrifice.

Not when her heart still bleeds and aches and cries out for him.

She can't go to his grave, because she feels she will dishonor him if she carries so heavy a heart to that place of stone and fire.

She doesn't want the weight of her sorrow to push down upon the earth and alert him to her devastation.

She can't go to his grave.

Instead, she goes to the training grounds in the hours of dawn when the stars still watch over the sleeping village. She trains and trains hard, ghosts of hours of blood and sweat vivid here, even as she sheds more blood and more sweat and the echoes of their shared past rings in the shallows of her breath and the burn of her muscles. She can almost see him when the light plays tricks, and she tells herself that she doesn't believe in ghosts. If he is a ghost, surely some part of him must be here, where he poured so much of himself into his training.

One morning, as the steam rises off of her sweat-drenched body, she goes to the memorial. She traces her finger over his name the smooth stone cold with the bite of the early morning. The pads of her fingers sink into ridges of his carved name, and she feels the stonestrokes being carved into her very being.

She can't go to his grave, but she can come here.

This is an Honor Roll; a listing of heroes unbound by dates of birth or death.

A band of brothers and sisters in arms.

It is a listing of comrades.

And for the first time she hates this era of peace because she may never be one of them. She may never rejoin him, etched into the eternal cohort of those that fought and died together. She breaks because it is just one more way in which he is now gone, and she may never be with him again.

The very next morning, she applies for the most dangerous missions available.

* * *

Next chapter: Two Years

_Thanks for reading, friends. Please take a moment to leave your feedback, if you are so inclined.  
Cheers!  
\- Giada_


	2. i: He knows

_Hi, friends. I decided that since _**Kunoichi**_ and _**Guardian**_ are so interdependent, it makes sense to have them in the same document. I am going to begin posting the _**Guardian**_ chapters until we catch up numerically to _**Kunoichi**_ and then post in tandem. Thank you so much for reading this story! - Giada_

**Title**: Guardian  
**Summary**: He gave his life willingly for the sake of his village, his friends and his family. If he had had time for a regret, it would have been leaving her behind. Now he watches over her, trying to protect her from the darkness that threatens to keep them apart.

* * *

**Guardian**  
**i. He Knows**

* * *

She can't go to the gravesite.

He knows.

He watches.

She won't come to his grave.

He can't bring himself to be angry – he isn't sure if he could go to hers. In fact, he knows he couldn't.

He watches, knowing he can't tell her that if he had had time for a regret, it would have been leaving her. He gave his life knowing he was protecting the future – his cousin and Naruto- he knew. He didn't know he would become a rallying point – that his friends would be buoyed by his actions and in the wake of it all, she would be left behind.

She has never feared death.

She still doesn't.

But it haunts her just the same.

She trains.

She trains, and he watches her – he is almost convinced she sees him once or twice.

She shakes her head and chides herself for thinking such nonsense.

He aches to tell her he is still there and he is watching and that he wants her to live the life she has.

But she won't see him.

He watches her at the memorial and suddenly knows what she has decided.

She has never feared death.

But now she seeks it.

And he knows it is to be with him again.

And his eyes grow heavy, because it doesn't work that way.

The very next morning, she applies for the most dangerous missions available.

And he is beside her, watching over her.

* * *

Next: ii. Two Years Gone


	3. II: Two Years

_A/N: Kishimoto owns Naruto, and all of his Narutoygoodness. I am just coping with having no updates on Wednesdays._

* * *

**Kunoichi  
****II. Two Years**

* * *

Two years of secret missions and hoping to earn her way out of her life and carved into the stone.

Two years of managing to beat the odds again and again, and feeling more hollow each time.

Two years since the ANBU mark was carved into her arm and sealed the rest of her heart

In the pink of dawn she brushes her hand over his name, still wearing the blood of the enemies of Konoha – of those that tried to take advantage of the peace between nations and the complacency that can follow in the wake of peace.

She knows he is coming – she can hear him, which means he is allowing himself to be heard.

She is always respectful of his time here – after all, he has been visiting far longer than she has.

She usually tries to be gone before he arrives, so she bows her apology.

"Hokage-sama," she murmurs and passes him.

"Gai is worried about you," his voice is low but clear in the hush of the morning.

"I shall visit," she says quietly.

She takes her leave of him.

She can feel his eyes on her, but she doesn't turn around.

She cleans up from her mission, files her report, visits her sensei, assures him that she is fine, just tired, fakes her smiles and her laughter and goes home to face sleep, dreading another day among the living.

She dedicates every breath to the protection of her village.

She has been offered transfers and positions outside of Konoha – chances for a new life and a new start.

She will not leave.

She must live and die in the service of her village or she will never rejoin him.

* * *

Next: Unexpected Ally


	4. ii: Two Years Gone

_*Naruto not mine. This can be read after i. he knows or between II. Two Years and III. Unexpected Ally._

* * *

**Guardian**  
**ii. Two Years Gone**

* * *

_Two years of secret missions and hoping to earn her way out of her life and carved into the stone. _

_Two years of managing to beat the odds again and again, and feeling more hollow each time. _

_Two years since the ANBU mark was carved into her arm and sealed the rest of her heart_

Two years of not knowing he is never far from her side.

Two years of him meeting her in the space between life and death and telling her she is too early.

She begs to stay, but he tells her she must go back.

She has to live her life, not seek her death.

She doesn't listen.

He sees Kakashi coming, and that means she isn't far behind.

She is suddenly there, and he nods to her. They have met many times over the last two years, and usually in this place that is special to the souls they watch over.

"Rin," he greets her with a nod of his head, even as he keeps his gaze fixed on his teammate.

The young girl looks up at him sadly.

"Still?" She asks.

"Still," he sighs.

She looks him over.

"You've aged," she says in mild surprise. "You are tied to her more than I thought."

He looks down at himself, then back to her in question.

"You have aged with her," she says looking him over. "Your appearance s altering with time. It is as if you are continuing to live your life with her."

"One of us has to," he mutters.

_ "Hokage-sama," she murmurs and passes him._

_"Gai is worried about you," his voice is low but clear in the hush of the morning. _

_"I shall visit," she says quietly. _

_She takes her leave of him._

_She can feel his eyes on her, but she doesn't turn around. _

_Kakashi sighs and turns back to the memorial. "Obito, Rin – what can I do for our soldiers? Neji watch out for her – I don't think she is coping well…. Maybe she will take that transfer to Suna afterall," he muses, although there is little conviction in his tone._

Neji knows she won't take the assignment.

She won't risk doing anything that will keep her away from the memorial.

Rin smiles sadly at her old teammate.

"We are watching," she whispers to him, her hand on his shoulder. "We are always with you."

Neji nods his good bye and follows Tenten back home. He knows he doesn't have to try to maintain a relative physical distance from her; he can see her even if she is out of sight.

But he doesn't like being away from her.

He watches her mechanically pack for another mission.

He wishes he could hear her laugh.

But that 'isn't her' any more.

The whisp-fine gray smoke curls in languorous tendrils and snake toward her.

He immediately chases them away, his palms glowing brightly with a vibrant energy.

He watches the smoke dissipate with an ominous feeling.

It isn't the first time he has seen the smoke, or has chased it away, but it is the first time he felt the cold of it linger behind.

He grimaces.

The shadows are getting stronger.

* * *

Next Chapter: iii. Reinforcemments


	5. III: Unexpected Ally

_A/N: Kishimoto owns Naruto, and all of his Narutoygoodness. I am just coping with having no updates on Wednesdays._

* * *

**Kunoichi  
III. Unexpected Ally**

* * *

She runs into him unexpectedly. Even with one arm missing, he could still kick the shit out of the lowlifes that were foolish enough to challenge him.

She joins the fight anyway.

He arches an eyebrow at her, but she gives no explanation.

They share a fire that night, and she asks him how to create the weapon summoning seal he has on his wrist.

He shakes his head. "You'd need Orochimaru or Kabuto," he explains. "I can't do it for you."

The next morning she looks him over and finally asks, "Do you want to send a message home?"

"I'll be there soon," he says, tucking the scroll of supplies she has given him into his pack. "But if you beat me there and anyone asks,… tell them I'm fine."

She nods and is soon bounding through the trees. She thinks that he recognizes the empty within her, and that is why he gave her directions. She supposes that of all people, Uchiha Sasuke would understand what her life has become.

She sends word back to the village and asks Lee to tell Naruto and Sakura that Uchiha is 'fine.'

* * *

Next: Appointments


	6. iii: Reinforcements

_A/N: I don't own Naruto. _

* * *

**Guardian**  
**iii. Reinforcements**

* * *

He directs her toward Uchiha, and she arrives just in time to take out the man that was targeting his left side. The wandering shinobi barely lifts an eyebrow before giving the slightest of slight nods, acknowledging her. They turn to survey their multiple enemies.

_"Rogue nin?" she asks._

_"Ah." _

_She flicks an expert eye over their weaponry and clothing. Judging from the variety she sees there, this is an assortment of shinobi gone rogue that didn't fight in the war, and sought to prey off of the prosperity that followed it. _

_"Mist, Stone, and Grass, for sure," she mutters. "Maybe River." _

_"Need a girl to help you out, Wanderer?" One of the 25 or so of them taunted. "We're lucky she came along. Konoha has the prettiest kunoichi. Too bad you'll never get to visit."_

_Tenten turns her head to him slowly, and hides a smirk. "They don't know who you are, do they," she asks, just loud enough to be overheard. _

_A smirk curls his lip and he gives a slow shake of his head. His Rinnengan is hidden by a jutsu; he hasn't felt a need to activate his Sharingan. He was simply taking the measure of his enemy when Tenten arrived – although she had protected what was his vulnerable side now. _

_Tenten's eyes narrow and her smirk spreads to a dark grin. "Sounds like it is time for an introduction."_

Neji nods to Itachi and Obito as he joins them to watch Sasuke and Tenten fight together.

"I almost feel sorry for them," young Obito says, watching the attackers charge the Konoha-nin.

"Ah." Both Itachi and Neji smirk. The assailants have no idea how outclassed they truly are.

Neji keeps an eye on the periphery where the shadows like to lurk. Itachi follows his gaze.

"Rin says those used to follow Kakashi," Obito says, adjusting his goggles.

"They did," she says materializing near them. When they look to her she shrugs and says, "Kakashi sent me."

"He sent me earlier," Obito grumbles. Rin puts a kind hand on his shoulder and smiles.

"It is because he trusts us both," she says sweetly.

Neji sometimes still can't believe that the young boy he sees is the Madara/Obito that would later rise up against the Shinobi nations – the one that would ultimately kill him.

But Obito has atoned, and Neji is unable hold a grudge for a sin forgiven; it is one of the blessings of the afterlife.

Neji rubs the back of his neck. Itachi gives him a knowing glance.

"Lee and Gai-sensei," Neji offers. They are invoking him – they are asking him to watch out for their teammate. "And Hinata," he adds at the familiar warmth in his chest. His cousin's prayers and invocations are special both because of his bond to her and their purity.

"Sakura, Kakashi, and Naruto," Itachi says in his dark, quiet voice. "They are worried about my little brother."

Rin cocks her head, curious. "Sakura knows you well enough to invoke you?"

"No," Itachi shakes his head. "Not specifically. It is a blanket invocation."

Neji nods in understanding. One of the first things he learned as a Guardian, is that when souls on earth make an invocation for one they love, they can send a Guardian spirit with whom they are familiar, or lend their prayers to the individual's own Guardian. Sometimes, the will of the living could even lend strength to the Guardian.

Neji and Itachi have crossed paths several times since the final battle between Sasuke and Naruto. They both know that the invocations have very little to do with why they are here. They are both watching over the people that mean the most to them, and are tied to them in a very special way.

"Fight's over," Obito says, bored. "Can we go?"

Rin laughs gently at him. "Let's go check on Kakashi – these two have got it."

The two remaining Guardians watch as their charges relocate to a safe campground, and cleverly set traps and seal it with several jutsus. Tenten takes first watch, and he knows she is thinking about what Sasuke told her. When it is her turn to rest, she lies in her bedroll, and he is sitting by her side.

Neji isn't sure that guiding her to Orochimaru is a good idea, but he knows how stubborn she is. She will find a way there whether they guide her or not.

"She'll be fine" Itachi says simply. Neji looks at him in question, but Itachi's smile is knowing. Neji has respect for this Guardian and finds he has a quiet sense of humor and an uncanny knack of observation.

"Someone watches over Orochimaru, too," he assures him. "She will come to no harm."

"How do you know?" Neji asks.

Itachi smirks.

"Because he won't let him harm a woman."

The conversation ends there, and Neji places his hand on her forehead, smoothing away the worry from her brow. He can feel her racing thoughts, and he trails his fingertips down her neck and over her shoulder. He leans forward and kisses her cheek gently.

"Rest," he says quietly. "I'll keep watch."

He watches her breathing still, and the smallest smile curve her lip. It was something he used to say to her when they were Genin, and then as Chunin, and after he became a Jōnin. The phrase evolved over the years as their relationship grew. It went from being something he said in passing as they changed guard, to a sentiment murmured into the nape of her neck, when he urged her to stay warm in bed while he watched out for them both.

In some ways, nothing has changed. He still watches over her.

In other ways, he thinks, as he keeps a sharp eye on the shadows lurking in the periphery, it has never been more different or difficult.

Now, he really _could_ lose her forever.

The next morning, she and Uchiha part ways.

She takes the time to send a message back to Konoha, and in that simple act he sees a glimpse of the girl that used to fill his days with impish smiles and playful banter. He knows her message brings happiness to the recipients, and the next day, Kushina and Minato appear. After hearing that she has run into Sasuke, Naruto has asked his parents to look after both her and his best friend.

He picked a good time; not even a week later, she is getting her seals imprinted by Orochimaru and it is a long, incredibly taxing, painful, process.

His eyes never leave her, and he stands sentinel with his arms crossed, his jaw tight. It is when Orochimaru begins work on the second seal, and the familiar damning mark is etched into her skin, that he feels the slam in his gut that he shouldn't be able to feel anymore. He puts his hand over her heart and he can feel the energy under his palm. Unbound by the limitations of the physical world, he cradles her head in his lap, keeping his palm pressed to her heart at all times. Their bond is so strong, he can feel the heat of her under his fingers, and in her dazed state, his presence is soothing and cool. At times, she can even glimpse his face, like a trick of the light. He murmurs in her ear, and encourages her. He holds her hand and can feel the flicker of her pulse against his otherworldly energy. He doesn't leave her for even an instant.

Kushina recognizes some of the Orochimaru's work as a variation on the Uzumaki seals. She and Minato discuss them, and even call Lord Third to see. They occasionally confer with Orochimaru's Guardian, but he has spoken very little.

In fact, Orochimaru's Guardian has been uncharacteristically and grimly silent. He has also been supportive in a way Neji would never have thought he would be. Whenever the shadows grow too bold, or try to reach for her, Jiraiya drives them away. Time, and time again, he dispels the darkness so that Neji can simply concentrate on her.

He sees why Itachi was unconcerned; Jiraiya would never allow him to harm a Konoha kunoichi, and even in death, is a formidable foe.

Finally, Orochimaru finishes, looking particularly self-satisfied.

He has been surprisingly careful with her, and monitors her meticulously.

He keeps her nourished and hydrated.

He does what he can to make her comfortable, even though he know the process is far from enjoyable.

The seals are in place.

He places her in a restorative, hypnotic sleep to allow her to rest and recover.

Neji sees the rigidity in her body melt away as she sinks, bone weary, into the mattress. He smooths her hair and speaks to her in a low voice before kissing her forehead tenderly. She will not dream – she will only sleep. That is the only gift he can give her.

He feels the pressure of a large, strong hand on his shoulder. "She will recover, Neji," Jiraiya assures him quietly. "She has weathered the worst of it, and she has grown into a fine, strong kunoichi." His smile is encouraging. "Have faith in her."

He turns eyes at once empty and full, and says the first thing that hasn't been a heated whisper or a murmured entreaty in Tenten's ear.

"I always have."

And he stays by her side, just as he has done since the day his soul flied free.

* * *

Next chapter: iv. Light


	7. IV: Appointments

_A/N: Kishimoto owns Naruto, and all of his Narutoygoodness. I am just coping with having no updates on Wednesdays._

* * *

**Kunoichi  
IV. Appointments**

* * *

She doesn't beat Uchiha home.

It is many more months before she goes back to Konoha.

Spring is beginning to give way to the first hints of early summer.

She doesn't stop to think she missed her own birthday until Lee comes to find her.

He insists on taking her to dinner to celebrate.

She can't tonight.

No, tomorrow she has commitments in the evening and will retire early to leave on another mission at dawn.

…

She sees the earnest and sincere disappointment and shelves what she know is her own selfish need to be alone.

She supposes there is some time tomorrow evening, if it isn't too late.

They agree to a late lunch/early dinner, and he gives her his enthusiastic thumbs up and a heart-wrenchingly familiar brilliant grin as they part ways.

The next day, she is early, but not as early as he is.

No one is ever earlier than Rock Lee, and that dependable consistency both fills and rends her heart with memories and broken glass.

Her smiles are small and tight, but they are there and they are there for her teammates – both the one that needs to see them, and the one that would have not wanted her to worry Lee.

It is only the two of them eating, but she can feel the vortex of empty left by the third.

The press of his leg against the side of hers and the occasional hand over her own or on her knee or on her thigh – all done undetectably and under the table, is painfully and notably absent as is the warmth he radiated into her always-cold body.

She hasn't been warm in almost three years.

Still, they talk around the space, and fill the growing miles between them with retellings of adventures, which really means she says her mission was nothing special and then listens to him talk warmly about training to become a Jōnin and wanting to be a sensei just like Gai.

She gives him a still-small-but-marrow-deep-genuine smile when she assures him that she is sure he will reach his goal, and he recognizes it and accepts it for the rare and generous gift that it is.

He pays for their meal, and hands her the containment scroll from him and Gai. Their sensei has had many of his weapons sealed into the scroll for her, saying he doesn't need them anymore. Some of his special remedies like the Medicine of Youth made from the Jofuku flower, some extra blankets, a sharpening stone for her weapons, a few antidotes Lee had Sakura and Shizune make for her, and two extra green jumpsuits and a pair of leg weights round out the gift.

When they part ways, she keeps her appointment.

The interrogation room is sealed, and it is there that she takes Ibiki into her confidence.

He listens gravely, his massive arms crossed over his expansive chest, his face giving away nothing.

Eventually he tells her the only thing she needs to hear. Yes, he is familiar with those kinds of tattoos, and the recovery squad can seal them should she fall in battle.

He doesn't mention he has never seen anything quite like hers, nor that he recognizes the work of the man who undoubtedly inscribed them upon her flesh.

He simply listens, and does his job.

When she leaves, he watches her go analyzing what he sees, as he always does.

Morino Ibiki has a keen and unerringly accurate understanding of how the mind works – that is why he is so efficient at interrogation.

One has to understand something to deconstruct it.

To manipulate it.

To break it.

He is a master of breaking the will and the spirit.

She is the master of living as one who is broken.

He is almost thankful there aren't more like her.

He'd be out of a job

* * *

_Next Chapter: Spar_


	8. iv: Light

Naruto is Kishimotos. Still.

* * *

**Guardian**  
**iv. Light**

* * *

She recovers much faster than he would have expected. He is surprised at the attention Orochimaru pays to her care, and the provisions he provides her.

_"You will need to return within the next two months," he informs her. "One would be better. I shall need to monitor the seal and track any changes."_

_"Fine," She says, wrapping her cloak around her shoulders. "I will be back through this way in six weeks or so."_

_"Good," he says, eyes roving over her lazily. "Take this," he hands her a scroll. "If something seems wrong with the seals, release that scroll. Leave it sealed until then."_

_She gives a curt nod and puts the scroll with her others. _

_"Not even going to ask what it is?" he asks with a twisted smile._

_"No," she replies evenly. _

_"Does this mean you trust me?" he asks._

_"Far from it," she replies flatly. "But you stand to gain or lose by the success of this," she taps two fingers over her heart. "I trust that."_

_"Smart girl," his grin is wickedly clever. "Stay to the Eastern paths," he says, flicking his eyes to the exit of his lair. "There has been trouble on the Western roads. All things being equal that route adds three days to your journey. Such as they are, it will save you several weeks."_

Neji frowns and looks over at Jiraiya. "Is he telling her the truth?"

"Surprisingly, yes," Jiraiya says, sitting on a nearby rock, drinking sake. "He left out the part where the Western roads would probably lead her to her death. Guess he didn't want to tempt her." Jiraiya shook his head. "Guide her on the Eastern path, Neji," the sage advised. "It isn't her time yet."

"No," Neji said quietly, putting a hand on her shoulder. "No it isn't." To her he said "Take the Eastern path. You lose nothing by taking this advice."

_"Alright, Orochimaru," she concedes. "I'll see you in six weeks."_

_"I look forward to it," he bows his head. In less than a moment, she is gone, and he stares at the space where she stood. A group of white snakes materializes at his feet and one slithers rapidly up his body to wind onto his arm. Orochimaru bends his elbow to consider the serpent, and strokes the leathery skin between its eyes with something that might pass for affection. "Keep an eye on her," he says quietly. "Ensure that she does not come to harm. Inform me immediately if she is endangered in any way." The snake winds down to the others and they move with lighting speed after the departing kunoichi. "Another wind to follow," he muses. "Which way will yours blow, Tenten?"_

As he runs by her side, Neji can't help but wonder the same thing.

The weeks slide into one another, and she updates Konoha via messenger hawk, receiving missions in the field. Her meeting with Ororchimaru is brief.

_"The seal is stable," he says, jotting down some notes. "I should still monitor it. Alert me if there are changes."_

_"I won't be back before two months," she informs him and he accepts._

When she arrives back in Konoha, Lee is waiting for her, the brightest of all the the early-summer-Konoha greens. Neji knows it hurts her, but she accepts his invitation to eat.

He sits beside her, but he knows he can't fill the emptiness next to her or in her heart.

She smiles, though, and he is proud of her.

Later that evening, when she has concluded her appointment with Ibiki and is back in her own apartment, she is holding the scroll Lee gifted her.

Her brows are drawn together in thought.

"When would that have been?" he hears her mutter to herself.

_She mentally counts back through her days. _

_She feels something slide across her memory. There was the one night in her journey where she stayed just outside of a small village. There were no inns or extra beds available in the village itself, but one of the villagers brought her to the shelter deep in the forest. _

_"We use this in the summer and autumn," the woman explained, opening the door to the humble one-roomed structure. "The women of the village – we come and harvest from the medicinal gardens and make supplies for the village. I am sorry that it isn't much, but we have a cot for tending the sick. Not that anyone has been ill here –" she rushed to assure her, "but-"_

_"Thank you," Tenten cut her off firmly, but not unkindly. "This is far more comfort than I've had in quite some time."_

_"We are happy to help," she bowed. "Tomorrow I shall go over those antidotes with you again, as thanks."_

_"Thank you for your hospitality," Tenten said formally, and the woman soon took her leave. She wandered out of the small dwelling and scouted the area to establish a perimeter. She took to the trees, and found that the medicinal gardens bordered a grove of budding cherry and plum trees. She dropped down to wander between them, and a warmer-than-expected wind sent a shower of pink and white petals cascading down. She looked above the trees to the full moon, and listened to the noisy quiet that is a forest at night. It was so like home. So like Konoha. No. It was like Konoha before. _

_They had a night once, wandering through a grove of trees like this. It had been strangely peaceful. She could almost feel his hand in hers as she wandered back to the dwelling, and set her seals and traps. She slept well that night, and without dreams._

She doesn't know how long she stands there, lost in a mix of memories from days and lives past.

"Was that you?" she asks aloud in a whispered voice, eyes far away.

He slips his hand in hers, just as he did that night. "It wasn't a green jumpsuit," he tells her gently, "but that was the best I could do for your birthday." She smiles almost as if she could hear him.

"Because if it was," she half smiles, "it was very youthful of you."

He smiles at her and she begins to turn, and he thinks maybe – just maybe now – she will see him.

But she stops short.

She shakes her head violently and snatches her hands away to wrap arms around herself and shudder.

"Stop it," she whispers to herself, harshly. "Don't be foolish."

He can practically hear her bricking up the walls around her heart.

The darkness curls in wisps of smoke, lingering in the corners of the room. The hope she had briefly entertained was now gone, and she locks any further consideration of the moonlit night into a deep, unvisited corner of memory.

He bats away the shadows that try to creep into the void left by the retreat of hope, and the set of his jaw is grim.

The smoke begins to grow darker, and there are hints of tangibility in the form.

They are hungrily feeding on her moment of despair, as brief as it is.

Suddenly, it is roiling, the gray mist turning to a thick black smoke with form, spilling in and racing along the ground.

He immediately begins to fight against it, but not before several thick, winding arms of black shoot out like arrows, racing toward her.

He can't turn fast enough to stop them.

"Dispel!"

The command is harsh and clipped, the flash of light is bright, and the shadows flee.

Neji reflexively covers his eyes, and when he lowers his arm, an amused Kushina smiles back at him.

Even in death, her inner light and chakra are formidable.

Tenten stops in the middle of the room to listen, as if hearing something.

Kushina is in front of her, although she can't be seen. She puts two hands on her shoulders, and Neji watches, a heart that shouldn't be beating thundering in his chest. He can feel the time still around them; and his eyes grow wide. Most guardians are not able to alter the flow of time significantly around those they protect, and almost never over a charge that is not their own.

And yet, the woman with the long, red hair, is effortlessly altering time to speak to Tenten's heart.

"My son is worried about you," she says. "So is his wife." Kushina looks over Tenten. "Kunoichi have to be strong," she says with a sad smile, "but they also need their comrades. You have strong allies, Tenten, but they can't help you unless you let them. When the time comes," she places her hand over the girl's heart, "you have to decide if you will keep your light." Neji watches as the light flows from under Kushina's gentle fingers to swirl against Tenten's body before being absorbed into her skin. "Darkness feeds on hate and despair," she says softly. "Your only true weapons, then, are love and hope. Until you learn to wield them," she shakes her head, "you cannot win this fight."

"I have faith in you, Tenten," she touches the girl's cheek kindly. "They all do." She glances at Neji. "I'm sorry. _We_ all do." She taps the space over her heart. "Protect your light."

Kushina steps back, then, and with a final nod to Neji, disappears.

He can feel the flow of time restored, as if everything released a gentle sigh.

Neji watches as Tenten stands hypnotized for a moment longer. She then shakes her head as if trying to remember what she had been going to do. Her eyes fall on the scroll from Lee.

She picks it up, and considers it. Neji holds his breath (which is absurd as he is no longer breathing, but he does it anyway) and watches as she carefully adds Lee and Gai's gift to her store of scrolls, her fingers lingering a moment on the familiar writing. The hint of a smile rests on her lips.

"One more jumpsuit for the collection," she says with a quick rusty sound that in another life might have been a chuckle. She goes about her business as if nothing has changed, but Neji can see it.

The smallest of small lights.

Deep within her skin.

And he is relieved.

* * *

_Thank you for reading - your feedback for these stories is just so amazing. Thank you for your support._

_ \- Giada_


	9. V: Spar

_A/N: Kishimoto owns Naruto, and all of his Narutoygoodness. I am just coping with having no updates on Wednesdays._

* * *

**Kunoichi  
V. Spar**

* * *

Uchiha finds her at the training ground, his new arm in bandages.

His face is softer now – the anger that so long defined him now dulled into something greater.

She knows that it is Sakura that has helped to heal him.

She doesn't have the space in her being to be happy, but she is pleased for them.

He looks her over with a practiced eye and says "Show me."

She begins to roll up her sleeve and he shakes his head.

"All of it."

She shrugs and pulls her shirt over her head and tosses it to the ground.

The warm summer breeze whispers through the grass, and somewhere a bird chirps happily, but the two shinobi stand perfectly still.

Her pants ride low on her hips, and her top is bare but for the black sports bra.

Defined muscles.

Tanned skin.

Criscrossings of scars.

A single tattoo above her heart.

His Rinnengan and Sharingan spin, and he is able to see beyond the concealment jutsu to the intricately wrought black tattoos carved into her flesh by a familiar hand.

There can be no question as to who put them there.

Like one recognizing the work of an artist, he recognizes the signature of his former master both in the complexity of their construction and the style in which they are rendered.

He pauses when he considers the one above her heart that she has not bothered to conceal.

He doesn't think it is any kind of summoning tattoo, but suspects it is not simply ink under skin.

It strikes him as vaguely familiar, but it is not in the style or penmanship of his former master.

She follows his gaze and the muscle in her jaw bounces once before her expression is once again the portrait of neutrality.

"That is something else," she says dismissively.

"Hn."

"Spar with me."

He arches an eyebrow.

"I want more practice with these," she holds out her arms.

He flexes his new fingers. He could use the practice.

As they fight, he notes how well she has adapted to the sealing tattoos, and offers instruction when it is needed. He also addresses the concealment jutsu, and helps her shore it up. It will never fool the Sharingan, of course, but as he is both her ally and already aware of what she is hiding, that is a moot point.

When they finish, he gives a satisfied half-nod.

She will still need her scrolls for an extended mission, but even if she were to be taken by an enemy, she would never be unarmed.

She thanks him for his help, and he knows she means more than for the spar.

"We'll train again," he says coolly.

"I'll be back in a month," she says, dropping her shirt over her head. "See you then."

Later, as he holds Sakura's sleeping, naked form against his own, he reflects on how much pain she must have withstood to have that many intricate sealing tattoos inscribed upon her flesh in what had to be short amount of time. It could only have been the work of Orochimaru, and he wonders what she offered him to undertake such complex and extensive work.

He might be an ally of sorts, but the simple fact remains: Orochimaru doesn't do favors.

He hopes that whatever she bargained is worth what she no doubt endured.

A light shiver dances across Sakura's skin.

He pulls their blanket up over her bare shoulder then trails gentle fingers to cup her jaw and run a thumb lightly over her lips before kissing them with a tenderness reserved only for her.

He is more grateful than ever to be where he is and on the other side of his long, dark journey.

To just be able to sleep is still a novelty. To have her by his side in all the ways imaginable is an impossible blessing.

His eyes drift closed with the heaviness of a grateful sleep only to snap open mere seconds later with a sharp inhalation and the sudden and searing bolt of recognition.

The unconcealed green tattoo with the curious angled marking.

It is the Caged Bird seal.

It is tattooed over her heart.

In that precise moment, Uchiha Sasuke understands everything there is to understand about the enigmatic kunoichi.

Sakura shifts in his arms and frowns lightly in her sleep. She turns heavily lidded eyes up to him. "Sa'ske…? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he says, staring into the jade depths of eyes more asleep than awake. He reaches over and taps her forehead in what has become a familiar, affectionate gesture between them. "Go back to sleep, Sakura."

She "Hmm's" her assent and her eyes drift closed. "As long as you are alright," she mumbles.

She nestles into his side, and sighs into his throat, and he tightens his grip on her as everything in life he once stood to lose winds cream-pale limbs around him in their shared bed.

He knows by the even rise and fall of her chest that she returned to sleep, but he still watches her in humble fascination.

Uchiha Sasuke knows about loss, and the madness that can follow in his wake. As much tragedy as he has weathered in his life, he knows with a soul-anchored certainty, that if anything happened to Sakura, there would be no salvation from the darkness that would envelop his being, nor the retribution he would rain down on those responsible.

And that is what he understands about Tenten.

He understands what Hyūga's sacrifice - as honorable as it was - has stolen from her.

He understands how continuing to live as the one left behind can be a torturous, directionless exercise in futility.

He does not think - no, as he holds his wife, he _knows _– that he would not and could not live without her. A life without her would not be _worth_ living, and he doubts very much that he would allow something as inconsequential as death to separate them for very long.

Sasuke has a rare and genuine moment of empathy for Konoha's weapons mistress.

The depth, breadth, and scope of her burden is vast.

The harsh reality, though, is that she has to carry her burden alone, no matter what anyone says.

He does not pity her.

He of all people knows that pity does not lighten a burden, and he will be the last person to add to hers.

* * *

Next chapter: Phantoms


	10. v: Warmth

_A/N: Kishimoto is the brilliant imagination behind Naruto. I sometimes pretend to know what is going on._

* * *

**Guardian  
v. Warmth**

Neji didn't have a relationship with Sasuke in life, and had no true personal motivation to return him to the Leaf the first time. It had been his newfound respect for Naruto and loyalty to Konoha that had cemented his cooperation and sacrifices when joining the team retrieving the prodigal prodigy.

When he died, instead of moving on to another plane, his spirit stayed near the battlefield, watching over his comrades. He had been one of many Guardians that stood by Naruto as he obliterated the hate in Uchiha's heart. Neji marveled how the once-dead-last-boy had united the shinobi in the land of the living and beyond. The darkness that had surrounded Sasuke during that last fight with Naruto had been purged; the hatred had been obliterated. He could see the light in the other man's chest rekindle, and he knew, intuitively, that somehow this Sasuke was the one Naruto had known and so desperately sought to retrieve. This was the real Uchiha Sasuke. Broken, fragile, and now stripped of his hatred and regret. The Avenger was gone with the darkness.

That was the day he met Itachi, and learned what it meant to be a Guardian.

He had since watched Sasuke fight to find his place in this world, (not unlike a certain stubborn Kunoichi).

When he comes to join her at the training ground, he looks the man over again. That light rekindled by Naruto is still burning, and has grown warmer. There are always shadows, but he is no longer plagued and constricted by them. He generates his own light.

Neji knows that Sasuke isn't just atoning. He is recovering. His spirit is weaving back together, and filling in the holes bored into his whole being by the vicious consumption that is revenge. He is someone that knows the pain in this life and the darkness, but resolves to never give into them again. He has precious people to protect.

He is working to fulfil the life he and Sakura were meant to build.

Neji can't feel jealousy – he is unable.

Sometimes, though, he feels his spirit grow heavy. He looks at Tenten, who has just challenged Uchiha to fight, and feels something in his being swell with pride.

He wishes he could have…

…

He wonders what life would be like if they were still together.

If she even just knew they _are_ together.

The month she is gone from Konoha passes much like all the others, with little to no company, and even less conversation. Even Orochimaru tries to draw her into conversation when she swings by, but she says little more than _"I don't know what the next few months will be like."_

Neji is surprised to find the Lord Third where he expected to see Jiraiya.

"Jiraiya is with Naruto," he explains. "I am watching over my former student."

"Watching over another failure, Hiruzen?"

The men turn to see something darker than the shadows emerge from the cold airspace of nothing.

"Danzo," Lord Third exclaims, taking in the man. "I haven't seen you since-"

"Since the Uchiha brat was defeated by the Fourth's orphan," Danzo replies. His tone is the same cool, condescending one he always used, but his lone visible eye narrows, and there are echoes of hatred and bitterness in his being.

"Where have you been?" Lord Third asks. "What happened to you?"

Smoke roils around the hem of Danzo's long robe, and winds up the cane in his hand. "I have been where I have always been," he replies. "In the shadows."

Neji moves in front of Tenten, and the former Hokage in front of them all, his image now morphed into his battle gear, as he points his heavy staff at Danzo.

"What business do you have here?" he demands.

Danzo's smirk is cruel. "I am watching over one of our shinobi, of course." His gaze roves over Tenten with a calculating gleam to his eye. "She is loyal to her village and will do whatever is necessary to protect it," he continues. "Just as I once did."

"Your misguided sense of protection cost the Village more than it ever protected it," Lord Third shakes his head sadly. "I should have stopped you then." His glare sharpens, and the air pressure shifts significantly. "It is not a mistake I shall make again."

"You are the same fool you always were," Danzo sneers, and the smoke bubbling and billowing around him blackens and spills across the floor and into the air, writhing in and out of tangibility. "How long do you think it will be before the villages dispense with this pretense of peace and alliance? Who will protect Konoha then?" The twist of his lips is snide. "There will always be shadows. There will always be darkness. Light is but an illusion – everything returns to the nothingness of the void eventually. This is a battle you cannot win, Hiruzen."

Neji takes his fighting stance, prepared to drive the vicious darkness away. Orochimaru cocks his head ever so slightly to the side, and Tenten feels a chill run down her spine. Danzo advances, grinning maliciously.

"I still protect our Village," he challenges. "I can lend them power. I can overtake the souls of our enemies. In the Darkness, I am finally free."

"That isn't freedom," The Lord Third stands firm. "You are a pawn more now than ever."

"I control the Darkness," Danzo's sneer twists maniacally. "And from here, I shall ensure that Konoha stays strong. I simply need the right warriors by my side," he slides a glance to the stoic Kunoichi under Orochimaru's care.

Neji feels something surge within him as he tightens his stance, and glares at Danzo. "She isn't an option," Neji's voice is cold and absolute.

"Isn't she?" he folds his hands on the top of his cane. "She lives only to protect her village and to rejoin her comrades in stone." He looks down his nose arrogantly. "You realize the problem, don't you? She is seeking her death, but she doesn't actually believe you will share in an afterlife together. She lost that hope. You, Hyūga Neji," Danzo taunts. "You are her weakness. She will give everything to be with you in the only way she can conceive is still possible. When she reaches that goal, her soul will fall to the darkness." Danzo arches an eyebrow. "Or should I say it will be freed? She will have what she wanted, and will spend the rest of eternity guarding Konoha from within the shadows, just as she does now." He spreads his hands. "Who are you to deny her what she wants?"

Neji clenches his fists, and distantly registers a discovery.

He can feel rage.

He can feel his energy pooling in his hands, and what could only be described as a pulse thrumming in his ears and throbbing in his clenched fingers.

"Enough!" barks Lord Third, and he slams his staff to the ground. "Be gone from here!"

Light surges forth, and the shadows recoil, but Danzo simply fades away.

"You never learn, Hiruzen," his voice echoes in the charged air. "The Light cannot exist without the Darkness. For the Village to live in the Light, it must be guarded from the shadows."

The air pressure drops, and he is gone.

"No," The Lord Third shakes his head and sighs heavily. "It is you who does not understand. There is no freedom to be found in the Darkness; it will consume you."

He suddenly looks old and fragile, and his image shimmers back into his normal robes. "Do not put too much in his words, Neji," he says with a weary smile. "There is still light in her."

Neji swallows his anger and his reply and everything else, as she is ready to leave Orochimaru and it is time to go. He bows to Sarutobi Hiruzen and follows after Tenten.

That night, he sits by her sleeping form, keeping vigil. He is absently stroking her cheek when she leans into his hand. He pauses and looks down at her. Sometimes, in her deeper sleeps, she seems to register his presence. He gently thumbs across her lip and kisses her. He doesn't understand why he can feel her kiss him back, but at the moment he doesn't care. Seeing Danzo and hearing his objective frightened Neji in a very real, very visceral way. He presses his forehead against hers.

"How can I make you understand," he whispers. "How can I keep from losing you?"

His eyes snap open at the familiar feel of her lips on his forehead, where the Caged Bird Seal no longer resides. He trails fingers down her neck and they rest on the familiar marking above her heart. He can feel the steady and slow beat of her heart, as she sighs and arches into his touch even in sleep. He gathers her to him, and holds her tightly, knowing that these rare moments when she allows herself to sense and respond to his presence are precious. He threads his fingers in hers, marveling that they still fit together like a lock and key.

_"It is rare," Rin said, "but not unheard of."_

_"Is it?" Neji asked. He had seen plenty of spirits shove their guarded soul out of harm's way, or redirect a projectile to a near miss._

_"Mm," she crossed her arms and tapped her chin as she thought. "Generally they can't actually feel us when we touch them. You are saying she responded?"_

_"Not consciously," he allowed. "I grabbed her hand to pull her to the side, and she grabbed it back. It was a reflex action; she didn't even seem to realize she did it. But…"_

_Rin's eyes grew wider. "But?"_

_"It was different," Neji leaned his shoulder against one of the trees. "I felt the heat of her hand."_

_"That is different," Rin mused. She shook her head. "I'm not the one who can explain it, but I think I know someone you can ask."_

_"Oh?" Neji arched a single brow. "Who?"_

_"Asuma."_

Rin never mentioned their conversation again, and he knew it had stayed between them. Asuma revealed that Kurenai had felt his hand in hers when she gave birth to their daughter, and again on some rare occasions, but not all of the time.

_"She is very aware, though," Asuma said. "She often senses my presence." He took a deep inhalation of his cigarette, and blew the smoke upward thoughtfully. "When I touch her hand, though," he mused. "It isn't warm. Not like you are describing. And you say she occasionally responds to you in her sleep?"_

_Neji nodded, and flushed when Asuma raised his eyebrows._

_"Not like that," he muttered._

_"Ever the gentleman," Asuma chuckled. Then he shrugged. "I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you."_

_Neji drew his brows together, clearly dissatisfied._

_Asuma's smile was small and knowing. "Just because we made it to the afterlife doesn't mean there aren't things beyond our understanding, Neji," Asuma replied. "For my part, I can only think of one thing to call it."_

_"What?"_

_Asuma met his eyes. "A gift."_

Neji doesn't understand what it is – what allows them to cross these barriers.

He does know there are times she needs him nearby- that her very being beckons him. He also knows she does her very best to suppress any memory or realization of these times together.

He presses a kiss into her hair.

He doesn't understand, but he is certain Asuma is correct.

"This is a gift," he murmurs. "You are a gift. I shall protect you even if it is from yourself." She sighs and his arms remember the way she nestles into him, and he wonders if she feels warmth or nothing at all.

The next morning when she lies with eyes heavy from sleep and traces hesitant fingertips over where he lies next to her, he wonders. He sees her hand pass through his form, not tangible on her plane, but he can feel the energy stored in the ends of her fingers and inhales slowly.

"I am still here," he assures her. "I'll always be here."

But she doesn't hear him.

So he stays by her side and waits, hoping for the day she does.

* * *

Next chapter: Steadfast


	11. VI: Phantoms

_A/N: Kishimoto owns Naruto, and all of his Narutoygoodness. I am just coping with having no updates on Wednesdays._

_More adult in this chapter. I don't understand the finer points of the citrus rating scale - is this a lime? Eh. I don't know. Read if you would like, skip if you wouldn't. _

* * *

**Kunoichi  
VI. Phantoms**

* * *

Each of the times they had been together was burned into her consciousness

She wakes in her bed and stares at the spot where he had lain, beautiful even in sleep.

She reaches her hand out and traces along the ghost of his warmth, still a tangible and lingering phantom pain in the tips of fingers that refuse to forget.

She remembers the way he'd push his hair from his face and roll her under him first thing in the morning, resting their foreheads together. She would kiss the mark on his forehead, first thing, every time.

She can feel fingers tangled into her hair and pulling her to him by the nape of her neck. She can feel the drag of teeth and tongue down the column of her throat, and the way he tugs her head back, elongating her neck and giving him room to work.

She can hear the rasp of breath and the dark playful chuckle she is sure no one else has ever heard, and the disjointed, aleatory duet of their sighs and groans and guttural utterances of raw need and desire.

She can feel silk thread through her fingers buried in his hair, and the tickle of it over her skin as it spills around his shoulders to whisper across her body.

She can feel the weight of his body against hers, the hands stroking her naked and heated skin.

She can feel him drive into her sometimes with calculatingly pleasurable deliberation, sometimes with mind numbing force.

Sometimes she can feel the grass cool against her neck or the rough of bark against her back, or the dip of the mattress under her palms as she relives the different ways he made love to her and she to him.

She can taste the salt of his skin, inhale the subtle musk of his scent, and arch against that touch that he reserved only for her, just as she still reserved hers for only him.

She can feel his hands, always warm to the touch, and calloused. They skim over her skin and knead her flesh and stroke her hair and wind their fingers together. She can feel the small pinpoint bursts of chakra he releases to various and specific points on her body with a maddening precision while smirking with smug self-satisfaction. She can see his expression melt to something all-consumingly passionate as he basks in the tremors of her pleasure, his own release never far behind hers.

She can feel his breath heaving against her chest as she kisses his forehead again. It is how each of their love-makings begin and end.

She can feel his arm under her pillow, his face buried against her shoulder, or perhaps facing her and resting on her breast, or simply pressing the length of his body against hers, and entwining limb and breath anywhere and everywhere they could.

She can feel his strong hands in hers.

Altogether too soon, it all fades.

The space between her fingers is once again achingly empty with a lingering pressure as if released only a moment ago, and not soon-to-be three years ago.

She can feel her breath ghost through the shape of his name unarticulated and slip between her lips as an unvoiced threnody. His name can no longer find purchase in her mouth – it soared off of her tongue for the last time the day he was finally freed to fly.

She finally sits up in bed, the sheets pooled around her hips as she listens to the stone-stillness of the gray morning.

The mornings when she can still feel are few and far between, and she shoves this one down with the rest of them, banishing it to the far corners of her mind to be locked away with everything else from before that day.

She refuses to acknowledge the residual ache of carnal needs roused in sleep and now ignored.

The traitorous emotions are harnessed and obliterated, and she releases her last unsteady breath before filling her lungs with the anesthetic of control.

She has no use for emotions, much less desire.

Those are indulgences afforded to the living and she is not a part of their world.

This is what she reminds herself when the days stretch in front of her interminably and her she swallows one more burgeoning, hopeless sob before it can do more than tighten her throat.

She does not belong here, and she will not be long here.

In the grand scheme of things, it will all be over soon.

Her days amidst the living are definitely and finitely numbered and only a fraction of the eternity she will spend with him in death.

She must be patient.

She must endure.

And so she does  
for just one more morning  
…and one more day,  
…and one more night,  
…and one more sleep,  
…and one more buried ache.

And suddenly the calender says a month has gone by.

And she continues to be patient.

And she continues to endure.

And she continues to measure her life  
not in hours  
…and days,  
…and weeks,  
…but in missions,  
…and miles,  
…and visits to the Memorial.

And suddenly two more months have gone by.

And it is Autumn.

And it has been three years.

And she still does not belong among the living.

And she is still patient.

And she still endures.

And she is that much closer to being with him once more.

For that - she can and will endure anything.

And so she does.

* * *

Next chapter: Hope Macabre


	12. vi: Steadfast

_I do not own Naruto. _

* * *

**Guardian**  
**vi. Steadfast**

* * *

There are those that always wondered if had doubted or regretted how he met his death.

If he had any lingering remnants of his old bitterness and doubt, then they flew from his breast in the moments between his decision to protect Naruto at the cost of his own life and when his pierced heart shuddered its last feeble beat.

He relinquished all regret.

All regrets but one

He never meant to leave her.

His last cognition, after turning everything over to the one person he knew could secure the future of their world and take care of his cousin, was of her.

His last decision in life had been his first decision in death.

He promised to never leave her.

There was stillness.

Then darkness.

Then peace.

Then there was the light. His deathself shielded his eyes as he squinted against the blinding ethereal light before reaching for the hand he knew rather than saw to be there.

Hizashi reached for his son, and pulled him to standing, before wrapping him in a father's embrace. He could have gone on then, but his soul stayed near the battlefield.

He watched with a full heart as Hinata encouraged Naruto and stood by his side, and held his hand. He watched Lee mourn his death and Gai sacrifice his lifelight only to have Naruto rekindle it.

But not Tenten.

He watched her compartmentalize and file away the shock. He felt her make the decision to allow her teammates to mourn openly, because they needed to more than she did. He knew she resolved to be strong for them and hold their small family together and fight until there was nothing left for her to give.

He heard her heart's whispered prayers as surely as he heard it crack somewhere deep inside, ignored. "Help me protect them," she breathed so quietly no one heard. "Watch my back."

He never left her side.

He fought right next to her, a comrade in arms with the other fallen from that day and days long past. The war continued on more than one plane as the darkness came to twist and claim whatever souls it could.

He saw their life together in her genjutsu, and knew that was the last time she allowed herself to imagine what might have been.

He knows how the time wears on her.

He knows the memories sewn into the edges of her heart have made it hard and heavy.

She is away from the village on the anniversary of his death.

She has been away from the memorial - the only place she allows herself to connect with him and her last tattered remnants of hope - for far too long.

When the darkness comes that night, it is more corporeal than it has ever been.

He holds her tightly and whispers assurances, and it is his father that comes to protect them both, keeping the growing shadows at bay.

She rises with the sun, and has few thoughts outside of completing her mission and returning to the village to pay her respects.

Neji bids his father farewell and resumes his journey.

Just as he promised, he stays by her side.

The world is a drastically different place than the one they knew as genin. But even amidst the aftermath of intrigue and war, there is one thing that has remained absolutely unaltered.

All of these years later, he is still watching her back.

* * *

_Next: Battle_

_I cannot thank you enough for reading and leaving me messages, friends.  
With a full heart,  
\- Giada_


	13. VII: Hope Macabre

_A/N: Kishimoto owns Naruto, and all of his Narutoygoodness. I am just coping with having no updates on Wednesdays._

* * *

**Kunoichi  
VII. Hope Macabre**

* * *

The rain pounds down on her and she is wavering but on her feet, focusing on the name immortalized in stone and inscribed upon her heart.

She knows he is there, and she wonders how she lost track of the time.

It is his turn with the ghosts.

She straightens up to leave, her finger lingering on his name as if she has to push or tear herself away – he isn't sure which – her fingertip snagging and dragging clumsily as it slips down the slick stone.

He pretends not to notice.

She slides her ANBU mask back in place before she turns and bows her respect.

He briefly meets her dark, empty eyes and nods, own his expression literally and figuratively masked.

There is a brief electric tension as they pass, shoulders millimeters apart.

She senses him deciding not to say something, and she is grateful.

He doesn't need to turn to know she has vanished.

She has been gone for close to fifteen minutes when he notices the dark rivulets trailing from the familiar name and washing down he stone.

He reaches out and runs a finger over the stone, and when he draws his hand away from the still-warmed name, there is blood staining his fingers. He looks down sharply to see splashes of red on the base of the memorial diluted and swirling against the dark of the stone.

Biting off a curse he summons the ninken to find her and hurries in the direction he thinks she took.

Another precious fifteen minutes slip by before he arrives at the old training ground.

The surrounding targets each bear a strike to their center, the handles of the weapons already cool in the increasingly heavy rain.

She isn't here.

He almost leaves, but something makes him turn around sharply, his eyes widening as his mind makes sense of what he is actually seeing.

She _is_ here.

She is a collapsed and camouflaged heap in the mud, ANBU mask clutched in her hand.

In less than a second, he is kneeling next to her and hauling her limp body out of the mud.

She can barely register the sensation of her body being held in a sitting position then being jostled against what was probably bent arm and knee.

He eyes her wounds even as he frantically searches the base of her neck for a pulse.

She doesn't feel her ANBU mask tumble out of her fingers, or the warmth of his hand at her throat.

She is mud-soaked and wan, and has clearly lost a significant amount of blood, but he finally finds the barest hint of a thready pulse.

The sound of the rain is soothing, and fading, even as her breath slows on a sigh.

"Captain," he barks sharply.

She thinks she hears a voice in the distance, and she manages to crack an eye open.

"Captain, report!"

She can't quite make out what the person she suspects is Kakashi is saying, but he looks farther away than she knows he must be.

"Captain, your mission," he says in a voice far more confident and commanding than he feels as he tries to force her to resurface. "What is your status? Report!"

She fights to swim to the top of her consciousness, focusing everything on the Hokage, but it is like trying to run up a rockslide.

He watches her brow furrow and her lips try to move.

She hasn't eaten in days, is wounded and fevered, and is numbing in the rain, but still she tries.

"Captain," he urges her fiercely, trying to keep her from slipping away. "Report!"

It is an order, and she is trying to comply, but she is being dragged from the surface and into a dark, silent depth.

He watches as her eyes wander over his face as if they can't fix on one point.

"Mission…complete. Threat eliminated…Hokage-sama," she mumbles before her eyes drift closed.

He shakes her and slaps his fingertips rapidly along the side of her face, as if intolerant of her insubordination. "Captain!"

She wishes she could assure him that this is fine – it is alright if she goes.

He gathers her in his arms and tells her to hold on. "That is a direct order from the Hokage, Captain."

She feels his voice rumble through his chest and manages a last glimpse at his face.

Her vision goes black.

She welcomes the darkness and hopes that this time, she will not wake.

* * *

_Next Chapter: Wake _


	14. vii: Battle

_A/N: I own nothing in the Narutoverse. It owns my feels...and probably a part of my soul. _

* * *

_**Guardian  
**__**vii. Battle**_

* * *

The mission between her and her return to Konoha is successful but doesn't go quite as planned. The target – the leader of an upstart gang specializing in human trafficking – is easy to find and eliminate. Without him, the local authorities have no problems taking down the rest of his gang and freeing the captured women and children.

She confiscates and seals what she needs to confiscate and seal, prepares the evidence to bring back to Kakashi, and erases all traces of her presence.

She leaves behind the bodies of the leader and the five bodyguards for the locals to deal with. They'll be there within the hour and will take the credit for the takedown.

That is fine with her.

She doesn't need credit.

She races off to Konoha with all possible speed; she is not far from the village.

Neji grimaces as he keeps up with her, recognizing all too well, the driven look in her eyes. Blood is seeping slowly through hastily applied bandages on multiple wounds, and at least one has been re-opened by her brutal pace. She is not in much pain, but she is in serious need of medical attention.

When she doesn't follow protocol and report directly to the medics, he knows something else is wrong.

She is already under the effects of the venom when she returns to the memorial. She doesn't register the pain, the cold, or the deluge of needlelike rain soaking through her clothing. With eyes unseeing, she raises a shaking and clumsy hand to reverently trace the etchings in stone. He watches with a grim and panged heart as her blood slowly fills the groves and hollows of his name.

"Tenten, I need you to listen to me," he says sternly, placing his hands on her shoulders, trying to make her see him. "Enough. You have lost too much blood. You need to get to the hospital immediately."

Her pupils are dilated wide, and her skin is sickly pale. "I'll report the medics later," she promises the air, her finger pressed to his name on the memorial.

And suddenly he knows true fright.

She heard him just now, but she did not consciously respond.

"You can't reach her," the sinister voice echoes, darting all around and bouncing off of the trees. Dark smoke takes form, and Danzo materializes. "She has retreated into her own mind. You cannot help her there," he says with a twisted smile. The darkness billows around him, and races toward her, roiling and nipping at her heels.

Neji jumps to her defense, expelling the first wave of the sinuous, writhing darkness with a protective expulsion of energy. When he turns to her there are demons behind her eyes. They are so much stronger now, and he can see the haunting begin.

"Tenten, you have to fight," he orders, focusing all of his concentration and energy on getting through to her. "You can't give in."

"Go fight," she mumbles before passing Kakashi wordlessly.

The battle has already begun.

Neji is quick to follow but slams into an invisible wall of resistance, watching in confusion and panic as she moves away from him.

His feet are rooted to the ground, and he cannot move.

"She has invoked your memory here so many times," Danzo says in a silky and threatening tone, "that this place has the power to hold you."

Danzo glides past Neji and puts a dark hand on the shoulder of the troubled Hokage.

"There goes another one that you can't protect," he taunts. "She will fall, Kakashi, and in falling she will protect Konoha from the shadows just as you should have done. You do not belong in the light any more than I do."

"You are the one that doesn't belong, Danzo," young Obito and Rin step between Kakashi and the sinister old man. Obito morphs into an adult version of himself and narrows his eyes that blaze red as he steps in front of Rin and Kakashi. "Leave this place."

"Oh, I intend to," he says darkly. "I am needed elsewhere."

"Obito!" Rin's voice calls out in panic. "The ground!"

Snakes of black shadow erupt from the earth and wind around and around Kakashi, entangling him in a web of shadow and his own musings, rooting him to where he stands, lost in thought.

"What did you do to him," Obito snarls.

"Just buying some time," Danzo says with a cruel smirk. "I don't want any interference."

_"Neji."_

The invocation of his name reverberates through his entire being and shatters whatever force that held him prisoner. He is suddenly back by Tenten's side. He doesn't know if she actually spoke his name or if it was simply her heart crying out to him, and he doesn't care. It is too early to be relieved.

She is in the middle of their old training ground, battle ready with kunai in hand. She impatiently swipes the back of her hand across her forehead, pushing her soaked bangs away from her face. She looks wild-eyed and cornered, eyes darting around restlessly.

Danzo is not far behind him, and he materializes out of the dark and writhing mists. "I see she has chosen a nostalgic battleground for her final defeat," he sneers.

"I wouldn't be so sure about her defeat," an unfamiliar voice pipes up "Konoha has some of the most stubborn Kunoichi."

"Oh?" Danzo turns and regards the old woman that has appeared at the training ground. "Now there is something I never thought I would see," he says dryly. "Is Chiyo of the Sand really coming to the aid of a Konoha kunoichi?"

Chiyo's eyes narrow even as her lips twitch into a smug smile. "I was protected by one of Konoha's finest kunoichi," she challenges. "I may not care for your Slug Princess, but her student is another story."

"You mean the one that got you killed?" Danzo snorts derisively. "Why grant her the right of invocation?"

"What's wrong, Danzo?" she arches an eyebrow cunningly. "Afraid of an old woman?"

Danzo's response is to bang his cane on the ground, sending lightning-fast obsidian serpents cannonballing toward the wounded and aching kunoichi faster than Neji can counter.

She is suddenly yanked out of harm's way, and is standing taller and straighter than she had been.

It is then he sees the threads of chakra dancing from Chiyo's fingers.

Neji doesn't have time to feel relief or to question why Chiyo can physically manipulate her so effectively, but he does have a moment to be grateful.

"I gave my life willingly," she says, all traces of levity evaporating from her tone and her stance. "Do not underestimate me."

Neji doesn't stop to consider her comment or its relevance. He instead rushes to Tenten. Her body is going to give out on her at this rate; she can't take on a fight right now.

"Tenten," he grabs her arms as if he could force her to look at him. "You have to come back. You have lost too much blood, and-"

His eyes widen as her hand goes automatically to the pouch at her hip and she snaps a blood replenishing pill between her teeth.

"There," she says, still scanning the area. "Happy?"

He is dumbfounded and perhaps even more terrified – what does it mean that she is suddenly hearing him so clearly?

"It is her will that gives you power here," Chiyo calls to him triumphantly. "She has invoked your spirit in this place many times over the years," she gestures to their training ground. "But here, she is cognizant of your remaining energy, and that gives you power in this place." Chiyo smirked at their enemy.

"Isn't that right, Danzo?"

"A minor detail at best," he scoffs. "And it does you no good –her battle isn't on this plane. She is busy fighting in her own mindscape."

"Stay with her," Chiyo tells Neji. "I'll keep Danzo at bay."

Neji gives a single nod of agreement. And watches Tenten eye the familiar array of targets.

"I've got your back," he says, and he watches her smirk, eyeing the targets.

"One hundred out of one hundred," she whispers, and the weapons begin to fly.

To Neji' surprise, she isn't only aiming at the bull's eyes scattered throughout the area. He watches in awe as weapons not only sink into the center of the painted circles, but as she lashes out at the surrounding darkness as well.

Wave after wave of weaponry sinks in targets and enemies alike, and Neji realizes she is fighting this battle on two planes. One part of her mind realizes she is in the real world, and is going through the motions of training while the other is locked in her own combat of grief against the darkness.

Chiyo aids where she can, especially as Tenten's ability to control her body weakens. "She can't take much more," Chiyo warns. "I can control her body indefinitely, but she needs to get to a medic or it will be a moot point."

The most direct attack would be to take out the source of the attack.

Neji leaps after Danzo, and Chiyo immediately goes to Tenten.

Chiyo had been right; here he has power. Here he can attack Danzo directly and he is landing blows that do real damage.

"Well met, Hyūga Neji," he says with dark amusement. "But even if this part of the battle is done, the war she is raging in her mind continues. You cannot fight that battle for her, and I doubt it is one she can win."

Danzo fades and the shadows retreat.

With a guttural cry, she launches a final hail of kunai and senbon and shuriken before collapsing inelegantly to her knees, broken and in tears.

"You have to stop this" Neji kneels in front of her with a gentle plea. He brushes a hand against her cheek. "You must return to this world and get to Sakura."

She clutches her hands to her ears with a strangled sob. "Stop it," She demands harshly. "You're not _him_. He would _never_ tell me to give up. Stop using his voice for your lies!"

The sound of something wrenching from deep inside of her resonates with him

"I miss him so much," she sobs. "I can't give up – he would never let me. I have to be with him again."

"I am with you," he tells her more harshly than he intends.

"Stop it," she cries weakly. "Please… just stop…!"

She is at the threshold of her limits. The rain batters at her as she tries to stand. She only makes it a few paces before she falls into the mud, completely drained of color.

Both he and Chiyo are at her side, and the old woman does what she can while Neji tries to reach her. But she is no longer responding to Neji.

He doesn't know how long it is before Kakashi appears, but he is instantly grateful. He is beside her as the Hokage tries to cajole her back to consciousness before racing off to take her to the hospital.

He feels the familiar tug at his chest and he shoots a look to Chiyo, who has followed.

"I'll watch over things on this plane," she says, and he allows himself to be pulled to that in-between place.

The world blurs white around him, and when he blinks, he is at the training ground. It is warm and sunny, and she is sleeping against her favorite tree. He kneels in front of her, and reaches to brush her cheek.

"Mmm." She moans, opening her eyes slowly. She looks up to him confused. "N…Neji?" she asks.

"Ah," he pulls her close. "I'm here." She raises tentative fingers before wrapping them in his robes and tangling in the ends of his hair.

"Where are we?" she asks, her voice muffled

"Same place we were the last time we spoke," he says, and there is sadness in his gentle voice. "You are at the Edge, Tenten."

"The Edge?"

"Between life and death," he explains, and looks into her eyes

"We…" she trails off. "I've met you here before," she says slowly.

"Yes. Several times," Neji allows.

"But," she frowns at the memory. "You keep telling me I am too early."

"It is true. You are."

Tenten looked up at him, her eyes scouring his face. "Am I not ready?" she asks, sorrowful in her hope. "Have I not proven myself yet?"

"It isn't about proving yourself," he explains patiently. "It is about living, Tenten. You can't keep going like this. You are going to get yourself killed, and that isn't how to come back to me."

"That makes no sense," she grips him tighter. "Death is the only way we can be together."

"Giving your life willingly, especially for another, can grant strength to a spirit," he admits. "But disregarding your life - seeking your own death, Tenten, for any reason - that is different."

"I don't understand," she says, her voice thick and a tear trailing down her cheek.

"I know," he soothes her and holds her tightly. "But you have to learn, Tenten. We will never be together if you do not."

"But you are here now," she gasps on a sob. "Please… please just let me stay, Neji. There isn't anything left for me back there." She curls into him, and buries her face in the crook of his neck, just as she used to. "I am so tired of fighting," she whispers.

He wishes that it was that simple. True, this time, she fell fighting; her soul shouldn't be in peril. But what, then, was keeping her tied to the mortal realm?

"There are still things you must do," he murmurs against her hair.

"What are they?" she looks him in the eye. "Just tell me, so I can do them." She touches fingertips to his cheek. "I'll do anything," she whispers. "Anything to be with you again."

"I wish I knew," he thumbs over the tears on her cheeks. "But I don't. That is something only you can figure out, Tenten. You are needed in the mortal realm."

She visibly crumples as she rests her forehead against his shoulder. "There is nothing for me there," she says achingly. "I've given over my life to protect the village, but everything I loved is here," she murmurs against his skin.

Her eyes grow wide and her hand flies to her chest. Neji can feel the heart that is starting to beat more steadily.

"No," she whispers in horror. "Please, no."

"Tenten," he stills her, holding her face in his hands. "It isn't time yet. You have to live the life you were given and know that I shall watch over you, always."

She throws her arms around his neck and holds him tight. Somehow she knows she won't remember any of this, and she finds herself wishing she would never wake.

He allows them this brief, bittersweet moment together and returns her embrace. "I am always with you," he murmurs into her hair.

He knows this isn't the last time he will speak these words to her.

But as she fades from his arms and returns to the mortal world, he dares to hope that maybe this time, her heart will hear them.

* * *

Next chapter: viii. Lost

_Thank you for reading, friends, and especially to those who have been kind enough to reach out via review or PM. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.  
As always, I remain  
Gratefully yours,  
\- Giada_


	15. VIII: Wake

_A/N: Kishimoto owns Naruto, and all of his Narutoygoodness. I am just coping with having no updates on Wednesdays._

_Happy Thanksgiving, friends!_

* * *

**Kunoichi  
VIII. Wake**

* * *

She does wake.

The sound of the heart monitor is slow and steady as it records the exertions of a heart that by all rights should not still be beating.

She lies still and numb, staring at the ceiling.

After a while she flexes her fingers experimentally.

She can tell that her wounds have been tended and bandaged.

She can even tell that they rehydrated her.

She sighs.

She is very much and unfortunately, alive.

The older nurse comes in and adjusts the bed so she is sitting up, chatting merrily and taking no offense at her absolute silence.

Now that she knows she won't be dying here, she sees no need to stay. As soon as this woman leaves, she is removing the monitors and going home.

When the nurse's back is turned, Tenten stealthily reaches for the monitor.

"Feeling better, Captain?"

She snaps her eyes up to find him leaning in the doorway. He pushes off of the door and enters in the room just as a nurse turns to change out her IV bag.

"Hokage-sama!" the nurse greets him brightly. "Just as we told you – the patient will make a full recovery!" She turns warm and friendly eyes to her and beams. "Good thing Lord Sixth found you! Why, if he hadn't gotten you to us when he did, you might not have made it to the morning!"

His gaze is locked on hers.

"Yeah," she says tonelessly. "Good thing."

"Now, lie back so I can check your vitals," the nurse instructs, and after another few seconds of quiet war with Kakashi, she complies. She fixes her gaze on some point near the foot of her bed and lets the nurse monitor and record her recovery.

Kakashi probably saved her life.

She should be grateful.

But she can't help the constriction in her chest as a single, driving thought roils up through her consciousness.

Her death – her release – has been stolen from her yet again.

"Well," the nurse takes the stethoscope from her ears and wraps it around her neck before removing the blood pressure cuff. "I'm done here. One of us will be by later with some food – you should try to eat," she admonishes gently. "Until then," she reaches over and flicks something on at the IV pole, "Tsunade-sama has ordered you to rest for the remainder of the evening. You'll be released in the morning."

Tenten's eyes widen slightly, but her face stays impassive.

"That isn't necessary," she says firmly.

"She said you'd say that," the nurse's cheerful smile didn't hide the glint in her eye. Perhaps there was a reason she had been assigned to her after all. "Unfortunately, as soon as this is done emptying into your system you won't have much of a choice."

Tenten snaps a look to the IV pole and then back to the nurse.

"Tsunade-sama's orders," she continues cheerfully. "I gave you half of the dose when I first came in, so you might as well get comfortable."

Even as the nurse explains, she knows with a sinking feeling that she is not kidding. She can feel the weight of the sedative as it slides through her veins to settle like lead into her muscles.

She has lost.

She lies against the pillows with resignation, and focuses on some point miles away.

Kakashi watches as the nurse scribbles on the chart while stealing glances at her reluctant patient. "Lady Tsunade was adamant that I keep an eye on you," she finally offers in a softer, maybe kinder voice. "You gave us a good scare, Captain." She flicks her gaze to Kakashi and then adds, "You were in quite a state when Lord Sixth brought you here." She puts the chart back perfunctorily and checks the time. "I'll let the other nurses know you are here, Hokage-sama," she says. "You will be undisturbed for at least the next hour."

With that, she leaves.

Kakashi looks over to Tenten who is still staring out into nothing.

He pulls a chair over to her bedside and sits.

She isn't looking at him, but she can feel his eyes on her.

"She isn't exaggerating, Captain," he says quietly. "Tsunade asked me how you had gotten into such a state. I find myself wondering the same thing."

She knows he is expecting an explanation, and he will not allow her to sit in silence.

"Numbing agent on the weapons," she finally offers. "I didn't notice some of the bigger wounds until right before I passed out from blood loss."

"Oh, Tsunade figured that out right away," he says easily, leaning back in his chair. "She is having Shizune work up an antidote; it is a mild variation on a paralytic venom. She doubts it will work on you twice."

"Hn."

"What puzzled Tsunade," he continues, "is that it appears that you hadn't eaten in days, and what had probably been a mild fever had been allowed to run rampant in your system. Given your mission report, that might even make sense – sounds like a brutal time. What doesn't make sense is not going to the medics as soon as you returned to Konoha. That is standard protocol, Captain."

Silence.

"Do you have an explanation?"

She can't explain.

She can't explain that she had been bone tired and wounded and cold and utterly alone. She turned in her report, and would have gone to the medics, but she had to go see him first.

She hadn't seen him in months.

She needed to stand in that place she allowed herself to believe he still existed; the one place on the planet she was a little less lonely – a little less lost.

She needed to go to see him, and then she would go to the medics.

But while she was there, the darkness came – probably because of the hunger and fatigue and blood loss.

She didn't leave him just go to train.

She went to battle.

The demons of three years had grown and twisted around her heart, and she fought them the only way she knew how, and in the place where she knew his strength still lingered, having seeped into the earth and air of that place.

No, she didn't realize she had lost quite as much blood as she had, or how grave her situation was fast becoming…but that might not have stopped her.

She can't explain.

She is weary and has no will left for explanations.

She only has raw.

"Tactical error," is all she says.

Kakashi is left to interpret that as he will.

"Hm," he muses. "That is unlike you."

"Yes," she allows. "It is."

It isn't like her to let the demons rise to do battle.

It is even less like her to lose.

But she is less and less like herself these days.

"You have become one of my most elite ANBU Captains," he says, his manner calm, as always. "But not everything is a solo mission. You have comrades, and you must depend on them, on and off of duty."

She can feel his eyes on her.

"We are shinobi of the Leaf. We never leave one of ours behind."

She feels the fissure inside of her chest and the dull familiar ache, at least until she shoves it away.

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. When she opens them, she is fixed on the white ceiling, and ignoring the single raindrop that seems to have lingered on her skin to trail down her cheek.

"Maybe this time…" She finally says, her voice hollow and pained and hoarse, "you should have made an exception."

He shakes his head. "Not an option, Captain. Besides. Gai would never have forgiven me."

"Gai will always forgive you," she says tonelessly.

"Neji wouldn't."

She feels the lighting stab of ice and a constriction where her heart used to be, as surely as if he had turned the chidori on her instead of just a name.

No one has spoken his name to her in years, and she hasn't spoken it in longer than that.

Because to her – it isn't a just a name.

It is an invocation.

It is sacred.

It is a lifetime.

It is a universe.

It is everything.

And she can't bear it.

He watches her closely and knows only too well the venomous pain that is poisoning her blood and gnawing away at her bones and heart and mind and flesh.

"He would want you to live, Tenten," he says quietly. "I don't think he would approve of you gambling with your life as freely as you do."

She grinds her teeth but makes no reply.

"Captain?"

He waits out the long pause.

"Noted, Hokage-sama."

He doesn't stay much longer.

He is aware of the blow he just dealt, and he knows there will be no more progress on this visit.

"Get some rest, Captain," he finally says, standing up.

He takes her silence as her reply.

He leaves the room and the nurse looks up from her work at the nurses station.

"I shall keep you posted, Hokage-sama," she promises. "Lady Tsunade asked that I would. She should be fully recovered by morning."

"Ah. Thank you." He turns to leave, his expression neutral.

He knows the nurse means well, but he doubts a 'full recovery' is in the cards for this patient.

You can't heal a broken heart when the heart is no longer a part of the body you are trying to heal.

* * *

Next Chapter: The Long Way Home

See you next week!


	16. viii: Lost

_Thanks for staying with me, friends. - GL, who still does not own Naruto. _

* * *

**Guardian**  
**viii. Lost**

* * *

When she stabilizes, the dreams return, and this time, he has trouble putting them from her mind. It is Chiyo who gives her the gift of sleep.

"She dreams of you," Chiyo murmurs, her wrinkled hand gentle on the woman's forehead.

"On some level, she is aware of your presence," she muses. "And yet she rejects it as impossible."

She looks over the kunoichi with a gruff sympathy.

"I can see the darkness taking root in her. It is not unlike a poison," she frowns. "It takes hold in the system, and once it has an anchor, it spreads. Just like anger, and hurt, and regret."

She looks up to him, with a depth of understanding. "Like the things that drove me all of those years, and yet I still lost my son and his wife, and eventually my grandson. Things that could have followed me into death, but didn't."

"You died without them," Neji says, more than asks, and she nods once. "How?"

"How?" she asks rhetorically. "My guess is because I was given hope."

"Hope?"

"Yes," she nods, looking back to Tenten. "I saw hope in the next generation. I saw that hope in Gaara, and in Sakura, and in Naruto. Naruto brought it to them – to me. To all of us."

"You think Naruto could be the answer?" he asks, curious.

"Mm," she purses her lips. "Perhaps. But at best, he can only be part of the solution. She could have died tonight, and escaped the darkness, but she did not. That tells me she has something left to do here."

"But what?" he asks.

"No way of knowing," Chiyo says, reaching for her hand. She sends strings of chakra from her fingers, and they weave around the arm of the sleeping woman. The strings wrap and wind into a band as they trace down her arm and past her fingertips.

Neji watches with growing fascination, as the strings catch on something beyond her fingertips. The loop of Chiyo's strings dip in the middle, as if pulling up on whatever it is that hangs invisibly from Tenten's fingers. Chiyo delicately moves her hands above this invisible object, sliding the strings along it.

He feels it before he realizes what is happening. His own chakra network is humming, and he automatically looks to it with his Byakugan.

"That's," he gasps quietly.

"She is bound to you," Chiyo holds up the ring of chakra strings with one hand, and plucks a tightly wound cord out of the thin air. In her hand, it is red, and he knows instinctively that it ties to him "A thread of fate." She says, absently, rolling the cord in her fingers. She narrows her eyes and frowns, thumbing along the cord. A second cord, thin as spidersilk and just as translucent is present, but Neji feels no attachment to it.

"Her destiny is also bound to another."

"How do we know to whom?"

"Too hard to say," she shakes her head. "But there is something tethering her to this plane. It isn't enough to keep her from dying," she admits. "But it is enough to prevent her from moving on, should her body be revived."

"Like tonight," Neji sighs.

"Yes," Chiyo nods. "Well," she drops the threads of chakra, and rubs her hands together. "I am going to the lab. That Shizune is working on the antidote, and I feel like lending some of my help."

"You can help?" Neji asks.

"Of course I can," She scoffs. "I used this venom before. I hate to see my work stolen, especially by those that don't fully understand it."

Neji gives a half smile, and the woman stands taller.

"I take my leave of you," she says formally. "Until we meet again, Hyūga Neji."

"Until then," he bows his head. "Be well, Lady Chiyo."

She turns to leave but stops.

"Hope does not belong to the past, Neji," she says over her shoulder. "It is embraced in the present, but it belongs to the future. When the heart sees no future," she shakes her head sadly. "It can see no hope."

Neji looks over Tenten as Chiyo's words fade. "She must learn to look to the future, Neji. I believe that is part of the key."

She disappears, and he is alone with Tenten.

* * *

Her recovery takes barely 24 hours.

As soon as she is released, she goes to Shizune and asks about the poison, and any relevant antidotes.

"We had a breakthrough last night, and figured out a way to neutralize it," Shizune indicates a box with thirty or so small vials filled with a clear, pale violet liquid. "I'm working with Sakura to develop a vaccine. For now," she grabs a few of the vials and hands them to her, "here is an antidote."

Tenten already has a scroll open on the table, and seals each vial individually.

"Turns out this venom does trigger an immune response, but it just generally works too quickly for that to help the victim. In fact," Shizune holds up a vial and studies it, "that is why we were able to treat you in the first place. Your natural resistance delayed the poison enough for us to administer the antidote. Your bloodwork shows that your body actually had time to accumulate some antibodies. Sakura is using them to create a vaccine."

Tenten rolls the scroll to put it away. "So am I immune to this poison now?" she asks.

Shizune shakes her head. "Not strictly speaking, no. You are highly resistant, and I doubt that venom will affect you the same way again. Still," she warns, "don't take chances. Use the antidote as soon as you have discerned you have been exposed to this poison."

"Understood," she says, tucking the scroll into a pouch at her side.

"And, Tenten?"

Her voice hangs tentative and kind and worried and firm in the air between them.

She looks up to Shizune, with no expression, and the shadows of demons under her eyes.

"The village needs you," she says, selecting her words carefully. "But perhaps not in all of the ways you think."

Tenten remains impassive, but Neji can see in her the coiled tension of a deer preparing to dart to safety.

"A village isn't just a place, Tenten," Shizune continues, warming to her topic. "It is people. It is a network. It is family. Protecting the village doesn't mean you count yourself outside of it – you are a part of it. You can't take needless risks."

"This antidote," Tenten nods to her scrolls. "It could save a life?"

"Yes," Shizune bobs her dark head.

"Then," she rolls the scroll and replaces it, "it wasn't a needless risk."

She bows to the senior medic, and turns for the door.

"Shinobi die all of the time," Shizune calls after her, something tight in her voice. "At the hands of enemies, in battle, while on assignment - that is our reality." She takes a deep breath, noting that the other woman is standing still as stone.

"But we live as well, Tenten," she says gently. "We live and laugh and cry and break, and heal, and grow old. We aren't just a part of this village, we _are_ the village." She looks to the tightened back and perfect posture of the warrior. "You hunt for enemies, and you work in the shadows, but you cannot live there. Not indefinitely. It will kill you."

Tenten does not turn.

"You are wrong," she says, and although her voice is quiet, it is threaded with steel and sharper than any weapon in her arsenal. "You can't kill a shadow."

With that, she leaves, and Shizune sinks into her seat, head in her hands. A junior medic enters the room, and stops in her tracks,

"Shizune-sempai? Is something wrong? Difficult case?"

Shizune looks to where the woman stood not twenty seconds ago. "Impossible," she mutters, and turns to deal with the paperwork.

* * *

Neji can't bring himself to disagree with Shizune's analysis of Tenten. Her missions take her farther from the village, and deeper into the darkness.

"You need to return to Konoha," he says one night, tired of saying nothing. "It has been too long, and you are weary." He presses his hand to her heart, and he swears he feels it pulse against his palm. "This is heavy," he rests his hand on the green mark etched into her skin.

She stares at the dark sky, seeking out the stars. "Due west," she murmurs, tracing the route of the heavens. "If I hurry, it will take no more than five days." She looks to the horizon beyond which Konoha lies. "It has been too long, hasn't it?" she asks the thin night air. "I have to go pay my respects."

He watches her ready the camp, and wonders if something in her heard him, or if she simply needs to return to Konoha for her work.

"Probably both," he murmurs.

Her lips twist into a smirk.

"Probably."

* * *

Next chapter: Rekindle


	17. IX: The Long Way Home

_Naruto = Kishimoto's. Still. Forever. _

* * *

**Kunoichi**  
**IX. The Long Way Home**

* * *

She has been gone for the better part of four months

The harsh winter has delayed her return to Konoha, and she is forced by the snow to take an alternate route home.

She supposes she shouldn't mind; it isn't like she is in a hurry to wait out her time between missions in Konoha.

But it has been a long time since she paid her respects to the memorial, and something keeps her moving along to get back.

It is by pure accident that she is where she is when she is.

The small band of villagers are returning home along the snow-heavy mountainside. They don't have far to go, really. They recognize her standard Konoha uniform and warn her that this area can be treacherous, and it is unwise to travel alone. They urge her to travel with them.

She hears the good sense in their words, and agrees to travel with them until they reach the village. From there she will go on alone.

They tell stories to each other and laugh. They share a warm drink that she would swear was alcoholic, but they assure her the warming properties have nothing to do with alcohol. They insist she eats their food and sits on the wagon with the children. She does sit with them for a while before saying she is more used to walking, and gives one of the others a break.

She feels it before she hears it.

A deep rumbling under her feet and a change in the charge of the air. The horses must feel it, too, because their ears twitch and they begin to nicker nervously.

The leader of the group looks up sharply. He has traveled these paths his whole life and knows what is coming.

"Quickly!" he urges them, and the others move with a synchronicity born of trust and experience. He calculates that the rockslide triggered an avalanche, but if they can clear this next bend, they will be out of harm's way.

She does what they tell her to do, marveling that even the younger children are trying to help. She is almost the last to get on the cart – the mother of one of the children is right behind her. The terrified cries of the two children from the wagon are sharp in the air, even as the mother tells them to be calm.

She sees it before the other woman and makes her decision. She gets behind her and forces her to get into the cart first- to take the hand of the strong young man inside. The mother makes it just in time – and she is just that little bit too late. Her fingertips are millimeters away from the villager when she feels the snow slam into her and he is left to snatch at thin air.

The tumble of snow whisks her away, stealing her breath and knocking her unconscious.

What seems like moments later, she can feel herself surfacing from sleep. She is resting against something warm and soft. The buzz of familiar voices gradually begins to replace the humming in her ears.

She manages to open her eyes and blankly stares up into eyes so achingly familiar, they steal her breath.

The distant voice is soft and gentle, as is the cool, healing touch, pressed to her forehead.

The second voice is deep and sedate.

The third voice is brash and jovial.

The fourth voice is a dog.

Her mind sluggishly pieces the puzzle together and recognition clicks in.

Team Eight.

She is in the circle of Akamaru's large, warm body, and there is a cheery fire in a fireplace. Shino and Kiba are talking, and Hinata is adjusting a blanket over her.

The others don't realize she is awake yet.

The raven haired woman mutely presses a warm mug of hot tea into her hands that she instantly recognizes as a unique Hyūga blend he favored.

Brown eyes scour lavender and she knows Hinata can see past the barriers to the sorrow and empty and loss banked there.

She doesn't expect to see the guileless and unfathomable depth of understanding and kindness in those almost-same-but-different eyes.

Something in her lurches painfully.

She turns away from those eyes that see too much, thinking she will finish her tea and then feign sleep.

Kiba must notice she is awake, because he turns to them while smiling his fanged grin.

"Welcome back," he says easily.

She looks around.

"The villagers?"

"All safe," Kiba assures her. "And also all worried about you."

"What happened?" she asks, her voice raspy in her own ears. "And how are you here?"

"We were returning home from a mission," Kiba said. "We stopped in this village to rest for the night. We heard the avalanche and headed out to see what happened. The villagers that you traveled with were already looking for you. They recognized us as Leaf, and told us that one of our kunoichi had been swept away. We tracked you down."

Tenten's mind was moving slowly.

"How?" she asked weakly.

"Hinata found you," Shino said, rising from his seat.

Tenten looked up at the quiet woman who remained silent.

"Took a few fang-over-fang's to get you out," Kiba continued cheerfully. "Nice little afternoon workout." He nodded to Akamaru. "Your body temperature was way low, though. That is why I put you on Akamaru. Old Inuzuka survival trick."

The big dog thumped his tail and briefly raised his head to her before resting it back on his paws.

"So where are we now?" she asks, reaching her hand out to scratch the large dog's ears.

"Back in the village," Kiba stretches and pounds his fist on his shoulders a couple of times. "The villagers are putting us up for the night. We should hit the hot springs – us because we are tired as hell and you because you were doing a pretty damned good impression of an icicle earlier."

"Kiba is right," Hinata finally speaks up as she stands. "Your body temperature is still low. We should get you to the onsen."

Tenten looks almost alarmed. "That's not necessary."

"They are private," Shino says in his monotone voice. "They are part of this inn, and the owner cleared it for our use only as thanks."

"That settles it," Kiba rubs his hands together. He looks over to Tenten. "Can you walk?"

She frowns darkly.

He holds his hands up. "I'm just offering transportation to the changing area. Past that it's all you and Hinata.

Akamaru perks his ears up, and Kiba turns his head to the side as if listening to something in the distance while he sniffs the air. He smirks at Hinata. "Incoming."

Tenten is confused until she hears the muffled voice grow closer. "Hinata-hime!"

"They told you she is here," another voice sighs. "Why are you-"

The door to their room flies open, and Naruto comes barging in to wrap Hinata in a fierce hug. "The avalanche," he says quickly into her hair before holding her at arm's length. "You aren't hurt, are you?"

Sakura enters behind him and goes straight to Tenten, kneeling next to her. "Long time no see," she says running a glowing green hand over her.

"So how'd you find us this time, Naruto," Kiba asks, bored.

Naruto doesn't break eye contact with his wife. "I just knew something was up," he says. "I went into sage mode and sensed the avalanche near where you were. Kurama warned me, so I grabbed Sakura-chan and here we are."

"And he literally means 'grabbed,'" Sakura chimes in. "You're lucky Sasuke-kun isn't due back today, and that Shizune could cover my shifts," Sakura shakes her head at her teammate.

"I wasn't in any danger," Hinata says, apologetically.

"I know, I know," Naruto sighs. "But there aren't many medics out here, and I knew at least one of ours was caught up in that snow. You doing alright?" he turns to look at Tenten.

The dark haired woman returns the look, confused.

"You mean…"

Naruto scratches the back of his head. "Yeah, I kinda knew that you were in trouble. I figured these guys could find you," he nods toward Kiba and Shino, "Can't beat Team Eight at the rescue and recovery thing, but I didn't want to take any chances. Besides, avalanches make for dangerous searches. Shino told me that it is one of the most dangerous conditions to search in."

"You were listening?" Shino asks in genuine astonishment. "I find that to be surprising. Why you ask? That is because-"

"But you are okay?" Naruto asks Tenten while Shino sighs, ignored again.

"She's fine," Sakura says, her glowing palm lingering over a few old, poorly mended wounds as she corrects them. "But you really need to get your core temperature up." She looks up at Naruto. "Want to give a boost?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I can do that," he goes over to Tenten. He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder and they lock eyes. He gives her an encouraging smile.

She had forgotten how blue his eyes are – and how deep they can be. She sees the warm red glow flow from his hand to wash over her, and she can feel heat moving through her body as Sakura monitors with her glowing green palm. His chakra is warm and familiar, and she is surprised at the shift of something in her chest as it flows through her. Sakura keeps her hand hovered over her heart; perhaps it is the mingling of chakra that resonates in her breast.

Before she could give it much thought, Sakura speaks up.

"That should do it," she nods, and Naruto gives Tenten's shoulder a friendly squeeze before standing up awkwardly.

"Probably should've asked if that was okay," He rubbed the back of his head. "Sakura-chan and I figured out that my chakra transfer is more effective if done right to the main part of the body when the whole thing needs a boost."

Tenten stays mute but nods. She doesn't mention that – hand-to-hand combat aside, - she has had more physical contact in the last hour than she has had in probably the last six months. She is puzzling over the strange sensation that lingered after the infusion of his chakra. What was that?

Naruto's hand was strong and warm and his chakra was a sharp, familiar reminder of those last days. She doesn't feel the same ache remembering this time, and that strikes her. There is something else there, and she doesn't know what it is.

Sakura gives a satisfied nod. "Much better. Hinata? Anything?"

Tenten looks up just in time to see Hinata's Byakugan recede. "Everything looks fine," she says quietly.

"Good. Let's get you into the hot springs – that will round it all out nicely."

Tenten looks to them all and realizes that this is happening whether she likes it or not. She no longer has the excuse of being too hard for Hinata to help – not when Sakura and her monstrous strength are now part of the equation.

"Alright," she sighs.

Naruto punches the air. "Yosh! Hot springs for everyone!"

"Why," Kiba arches an eyebrow at Naruto. "You were in Konoha like – an hour ago. What did you do to earn a trip to the hot springs?"

"I found you guys," Naruto beams. "And I brought the medic. I'm back-up!"

Kiba snorts, Shino sighs and Sakura laughs.

The girls make their way to the hot spring. Their conversation is light, and their stay isn't extended. Sakura wants to make sure that Tenten gets to bed and has a good night's sleep. Hinata volunteers to go ahead and make sure there is something warm to eat waiting for them. Tenten manages to move mostly on her own, and Sakura is there the time she stumbles, holding her up with no strain whatsoever. Tenten sinks to the bench in the changing area and Sakura runs a palm over her, checking her temperature and other vitals. Tenten dresses quickly. She manages to keep her one visible tattoo from being detected this evening because she isn't up to any explanations or pity in close quarters.

Soon they are back in their room, and there are steaming bowls of soup waiting. Tenten is hungrier than she thought she would be, and is surprised to find she finishes all of the food. She doesn't eat like that much these days.

"Hope you don't mind," Sakura looks to Tenten apologetically. "Naruto sort of talked the innkeeper into a third room for him and Hinata. I'll bunk in here for the night if that is alright."

Tenten shrugs drowsily. "It's fine." Her fatigue suddenly overwhelms her, and Sakura half urges half forces her to get to bed.

"You should try to get some rest," she reasons. "Naruto has a bunch of clones keeping watch, and Shino apparently set some kind of bug alarm system," she shudders involuntarily. "Kakashi probably doesn't have this level of security," she teases lightly.

Tenten gives a half smile in response. She wants to protest, but she finds sleep beginning to steal over her.

Sakura sits on the edge of her bed and runs a final check over her, before folding her hands in her lap, as if debating what to say.

"What is it?" Tenten surprises her by asking, watching the medic through tired but attentive eyes.

"I…I never got to thank you," she offers slowly. "Your message… last year? It… it meant a lot to know that he was okay." She looks over her friend carefully. "He told me about it when he came home. Thanks for looking out for him."

Tenten gives a small shrug. "No problem."

Sakura nods, and stands quietly. Tenten feels something tug at the back of her tongue, and the words leap from her mouth before she realizes they are even there. "Congratulations, by the way," she says to Sakura's half turned back. "On your wedding. Sorry I…I couldn't be there."

Sakura turns and smiles a quiet, understanding smile before putting a firm but gentle hand on Tenten's shoulder.

"You were there when it counted the most."

With that, Sakura turns to get ready for bed, and Tenten allows sleep to overtake her.

When she wakes the next morning, Tenten is amazed at how good she feels. She figures it is Naruto's chakra at work, and swallows the memories that realization threatens to resurrect with less difficulty than normal.

They are all waiting for her – they will travel back to Konoha in a group.

She had been on her way back to Konoha when she stopped to help those travelers, so she doesn't have a good reason _not_ to return with Team Eight, Sakura, and Naruto.

Sakura doesn't want to risk her body temperature lowering again, so Naruto keeps her cloaked in a thin mantle of chakra, and Kiba insists that she rides Akamaru to minimize the risk of fatigue or Naruto's chakra not keeping up. Shino discretely hands her a canteen on the one break they take, and watches to make sure she drinks as well as eats the rations they have divided to share with her. Sakura keeps a close eye on her, and Naruto and Kiba keep a cheerful commentary running the whole time. Hinata is silent, scouting ahead with her Byakugan, making sure their route is as direct and uncomplicated as possible.

When they get to Konoha, Naruto and Shino go to report in to Kakashi, while Kiba, Hinata, and Sakura take her for her post-mission check in at the hospital.

Kiba leaves them at the door with his cocky grin.

"Thanks," Tenten manages.

Kiba just shrugs. "No problem. You're one of us. We've always got each other's backs."

That statement is rolling around in her head while she waits for Sakura to come back in and clear her to leave. She wraps her arms around herself and looks out of the window. She has absolutely no damage from the avalanche or her time in the snow, so she expects to be back in the field tomorrow. She still can't figure what happened when Naruto's chakra flooded over her. Something changed… but what?

She hears the door open but doesn't turn around right away.

Hinata slips in and offers her a small smile. She had to fill out some minor paperwork since she had technically been the first medical responder on the scene where a Konoha shinobi had been injured. Considering that the follow-up medic had been one of the top two in the entire Shinobi nations, Hinata is fairly certain her paperwork is redundant; nevertheless, she does her duty without complaint or second thought.

She crosses the short distance to Tenten.

"You should be released soon," she says in her gentle voice. "Do you want me to wait for you to go home?"

Tenten shakes her head. "No," her voice sounds gruff in her own ears, especially when it hangs in the same air as Hinata's. "Thank you," she adds as if the platitude is rusty from neglect and heavy in her mouth.

Hinata surprises her by reaching for her hands and meeting her startled eyes with something infinitely kind and unwavering.

"If you need anything, please tell me. And I don't just mean in your current situation. I'm always here for you."

Tenten's surprise must show, because Hinata's laugh is light. "Why so surprised? Like Kiba said – you are one of us."

Tenten can't look into those eyes any more. She drops her gaze to their joined hands and squeezes them. She fights down the unfamiliar tightness in her throat, and things that she thought she had forgotten how to feel.

"Thank you, Hinata."

The pale hands wrap around hers gently but firmly before she turns quietly for the door. Tenten listens to her soft footfall, noting that it pauses.

"Everyday."

Tenten looks up. Hinata's gaze is somewhere to the side.

"I miss him. Everyday."

She turns back to the battle-hardened kunoichi, and Tenten feels that achingly-familiar-but-not-the-same gaze lock onto her. "But I've missed you, too Tenten. When you are ready to come home, we will all be here for you."

And with that, she leaves the room.

* * *

Next Chapter: On The Edge


	18. xi: Rekindle

_A/N: for those new to the story, this chapter parallels Kunoichi IX. "The Long Way Home" and precedes "On the Edge". I will probably re-order the chapters on FFN once we are caught up to Kunoichi._

* * *

**Guardian**  
**ix. Rekindle**

* * *

Tenten is asleep.

Sakura checks her friend's vitals before slipping on a robe and padding out of the room.

Hinata meets her in the hall, to ask about Tenten's condition.

Neji sees all of this from his place by Tenten's side, the low, even whisper of her breathing the only sound in the room.

He brushes his hand across her cheek.

She has not indicated she heard him since several nights ago, and he wonders if it had been some kind of fluke.

His eyes drift to her concealed tattoo. The energy contained there is different, and he suspects his cousin noticed.

He is beginning to suspect his cousin is far more perceptive than even he gave her credit for.

He knew she was not very far away when the avalanche began. He reached out to her, knowing her team could help Tenten.

But Hinata had sensed something a fraction of a second before he reached her, and quietly directed her team toward the disturbance.

Naturally, the moment Hinata moved toward danger, Kurama was aware – Kushina saw to that. Then again, the fox demon is closely attuned to his host's mate, and this is not the first time he alerted Naruto to a problem. Neji wonders if some of the chakra of the tailed beast transferred to afterlife with Kushina and Minato, allowing Kurama, and therefore Naruto, to have another level of perception. It would explain why Naruto had instances of sensing the dead, even if he did not appear to see or hear them.

The moment Naruto had an inkling that something was wrong, he went into sage mode. In no time at all, he recognized both Tenten's predicament and that Team Eight was moving to intercept.

Naruto had indeed interrupted Sakura at work, told her to get supplies, and then picked her up and whisked her out of Konoha, silencing all protestations with "Tenten is in trouble, and maybe Team Eight."

From his place in the spirit world, he both sits with Tenten and watches over his cousin end her conversation and cross to her room down the hall.

_Naruto sits on the edge of the bed with his eyes closed in meditation. He and Kurama have been speaking, but they end their conversation when Hinata returns from speaking with Sakura._

_Naruto wordlessly extends a hand to her, and she is suddenly against his chest and wrapped in his arms where she belongs._

_"How is she?"_

_"Sakura says she is sleeping and that she'll be a bit weak tomorrow morning, but fine to travel and back to normal in a day or so."_

_"That is good to hear," he exhales in relief. He pulls her more tightly to himself._

_"I missed you," he says, burying his nose in the silk of her hair. "When I'm Hokage, no more long missions."_

_"This was barely two weeks," she chides gently._

_"Too long," Naruto says emphatically. "Even Shikamaru thinks you should take fewer missions. He says it affects my productivity."_

_Hinata smiles at her husband. "It will be good to be home," she says sweetly, both tactfully changing the subject as well as speaking what is in her heart._

_"Yeah," he pulls her to sit across his lap, draping one arm across her hips, and cradling her against him with the other. "Home is much better when you are there. I get really lonely without you, you know? I don't think Sasuke was ever so happy to be sent on a mission – he was pretty sick of me."_

_Hinata tucks her head into the space between his shoulder and chin. "I'm sorry," she says again, with a small frown. "I don't like to think that you were lonely."_

_"I'm always lonely without you," he shrugs. "And I'm never lonely with you. That's part of what I love about you."_

_Hinata feels that familiar melting in her chest as his words warm her heart. She presses a gentle kiss to the underside of his jaw, and he wraps his arms around her, holding her close._

_"So we are agreed, yeah?" he sighs into her hair. "No more long missions."_

_"We'll see," she half laughs._

_"We'll see, huh?" Naruto asks with a slow grin. Before his wife can blink, he's moved them to the head of bed, and he hovers over her as his expression melts into something far less playful._

_"Naruto-kun," she breathes, and he swallows her protests in a deep and demanding kiss, his hand trailing lightly down her neck and over her breast to splay against her rib cage._

_"No more arguing," he murmurs against her mouth._

_"Arguing?" she gasps, trying to regain the air he has stolen from her. "I'm not-"_

_He silences her with a low chuckle and the kind of kiss that assures her he is teasing, and more than spells out his intended activity for the evening._

Neji allows the fabric of the mortal realm to drift back into place.

There are moments meant to be shared only by those involved, and while he is always attuned to his cousin on some level, he is no longer actively watching her.

Instead, he turns his full attention to Tenten, and the strange change in the spark in her chest.

It burns differently now, and he realizes that the small flame is tinged with the warmth and strength of Naruto's own light.

He hovers his hand over the familiar mark engraved upon her skin and above her heart.

The flame flickers and leaps toward his hand.

Surprise is not something that comes easily to the dead, but it trickles in through his fingers and tingles along his arm.

He places his hand on the mark, and the thrum of her heartbeat is strong against his palm.

He watches in awe as the light glimmers under his touch and suffuses into a wan light around his hand. The gentle glow and tentative warmth reaches as far as his wrist, anchoring him to her.

She shifts in sleep.

"_Neji."_

His name escapes on the back of a barely audible sigh, and the mark pulses beneath his hand in a slower, more tentative cadence than her heartbeat.

And in that instant, he is more tangibly connected to her than he has ever been in the afterlife.

"I'm here," he says gently. "Rest."

She sighs and slips into a deeper sleep, and he keeps vigil over the fascinating sliver of light, like an ancient keeper of the flame.

The dawn brings more changes.

The light is growing.

On the journey back to Konoha, the tiny flame dances with each interaction with one of their friends, but leaps at Hinata's words:

"_When you are ready to come home, we will all be here for you._"

"When I come home?" she murmurs to the empty air, before shaking her head. "There is only one home left for me. I can only hope he is there, waiting," she confides to the empty air and sterile walls of the hospital room.

She visits the memorial, brushing her fingertips against the familiar hollows of his name.

"I will always wait for you," he tells her, gently. "But I am not the only one who cares for you, Tenten. You have a place here, among the living, and a life to live."

"I thought for sure I'd join you this time," she says quietly. "Just this once, though" she brushes a hand on the stone, "I'm glad I didn't. We both know Hinata would have found a way to blame herself." She rests her hand on his name. "I am not the only one that suffered when we lost you. I don't want her to go through that again on my account."

She turns her face to the wind, closes her eyes and inhales deeply. When she opens her eyes, she steps back and bows respectfully to the memorial.

"I'll see you when I return to Konoha."

The next few weeks, he sees hints of her sensing him, even if it isn't consciously.

The darkness is always lurking in the periphery, and it makes him uneasy.

The brighter her light glows, the hungrier the darkness becomes, but it does not attack.

That, more than anything, makes Neji wary.

It is not in the darkness' nature to wait.

And it is clearly biding its time.

* * *

She infiltrates the east enemy camp under the cover of darkness, tasked with locating and eliminating the leader.

Five minutes later, a man from the border patrol staggers in.

"We're under attack," he gasps out before collapsing to the ground.

A barrage of weaponry follows in his wake, taking out three of his compatriots, and ending his misery.

The alarm is sounded, and the enemy shinobi retaliate, leaping into action, releasing roiling clouds of thick, purple smoke and flinging weaponry laced with poison.

They do not know how many have entered the camp, or that their leader is dead.

None of them live long enough to find out.

She takes them down before leaning heavily against a tree, eyes watering and lungs thick with inhaled poison.

She lobs a ball of explosive tag into the center of the camp, and the blast of white smoke neutralizes and dissipates the remainder of the deadly gas.

She unseals the syringe with the antidote and jabs herself in the arm, wincing at the burn of the serum as it slithers under her skin. With shaking hands, she pulls out a medicinal tablet and holds it under her tongue until it dissolves. When it is gone, she sets off the white flare to spark into the night sky.

"I see your end of the mission was successful."

She looks up into the trees and watches Sai leap down, followed by several other ANBU.

"You look like shit," he says cheerfully.

"You don't look much better," she grunts. "Status?"

"We took care of the remaining camps, and the rest of the patrol - except for the one guard we let escape. I'm surprised that you ordered the patrol to be left alive as long as you did."

"They were in direct communication with this camp," she says hoarsely, voice rough from inhaling the noxious smoke. "Taking them out meant risking discovery before I finished," she looked over the bodies being quickly checked and incinerated by the cloaked shadows of ANBU. "I've been exposed to this poison before; none of you have. Letting the lone border guard escape forced them to sound the alarm and deploy their main attack."

Sai gives her a calculating look.

"Then it is lucky for us that our missions happened to coincide. I trust you have everything you need from the targets?"

"Here," she taps a scroll at her hip.

"The rest of you," Sai calls over his shoulder, "wrap up and return to base."

A muffled chorus of "hai" echoes behind their masks. He turns to Tenten and eyes her critically.

A large ink bird drops from the skies, landing at Sai's side. "Let's go. I'll ride behind you; you look like you'll fall off, otherwise."

She doesn't argue, because in truth she is not sure she can focus on maintaining her balance on the ink creature. The night wind is cool as it rushes over them and her mind is suddenly sharp and clear.

She looks to the lightening sky in the east as they soar toward their village.

She closes her eyes and lets the air and sky rush around her. "_Maybe this is what it feels like to truly be free,_" she thinks. "_This,_" she decides, "_is life uncaged_."

She hopes that Neji has achieved this freedom.

He wants to assure her that he has, and he wants the same for her.

For now, though, he is focused on the horizon.

Sai's 'brother' Shin travels with them, but he remains largely silent.

When they arrive at the village, Sai and Tenten part ways.

Neji is surprised Shin continues to stay with them.

"Sai invoked me," Shin explains. "But not for him. It was for her," he nods to Tenten who proceeds directly to the medics. "Sai asked me to watch over her. He knows what she did for Ino."

Neji gives a small nod, and nothing else needs to be said. However, as Tenten leaves the medics with every intention of ignoring their orders, he can't repress a small sigh.

"Looks like I can use all the help I can get," he mutters dryly.

"You'll need more than that, Hyūga Neji," Danzo's voice echoes around them, and the air pressure drops, and darkness spills about them.

"Tonight." the voice declares. The dark energy that crackles ominously along Neji's skin disappears as swiftly as it comes, but not before Danzo imparts a final, chilling decree.

"Tonight, she falls."

* * *

_As always, thank you for reading :)  
-GL_


	19. X: On the Edge

_A/N: I do not own Naruto because if I did, I would be watching the movie in Japan right. now. Also, I would apparently know Japanese, so I wouldn't have to wait for sub versions. Boo._

* * *

**Kunoichi  
X. On the edge**

* * *

Kakashi makes his way down the streets of Konoha, hands in his pockets.

It is getting late, he notes with an eye to the darkening sky.

"Just in there."

He looks down to Pakkun, who tilts his head to the building across the street.

"She is still there?"

"Ah," Pakkun bobs his head. "Bull and Shiba watched the front, and Akino and Urushi are at the back. The rest patrolled the neighborhood while I went to get you. You should have summoned us sooner; we wouldn't have let her leave the hospital."

"Thank you, Pakkun," Kakashi says, eyeing the doorway. "Let Lee and Gai know everything is fine. I'll handle it from here."

Pakkun nodded and trotted off to inform the other ninken before they released.

Kakashi entered the restaurant/bar, his posture deceptively easy.

He knew after she turned in her mission report that she would go to the medics; she had been vigilant about that since their last discussion – probably to avoid a repeat of the discussion.

Since she had returned to Konoha with Team Eight and Naruto and Sakura, more of the Konoha 11 had been checking in with him about her. Sakura had sent word that she declined to stay in the hospital for observation, and was heading home. Kakashi, equal parts suspicious and concerned, decided he should check in with his Captain. When he neared her apartment, he ran into Lee. Lee told him that he had gone to visit his teammate, but she wasn't home. Kakashi knew that Lee didn't know his stubborn teammate should have still been in the hospital, and said he'd let him know if he bumped into her.

He finds her sitting with her back in the corner of a booth, legs stretched out on the bench seat and staring into nothing.

The bartender rushes over to the Hokage, wringing his hands in a dishtowel.

"I'm glad you are here, Hokage-sama. The Captain has been sitting like this for about the last twenty minutes, but she won't speak or break out of that stare. I've seen her drink before – she definitely didn't have enough to make her like this. I was going to get a hold of Lee or Gai; I figured they might know what to do. I was afraid if I startled her, she might get spooked, and we all know she is always well armed, and…"

Kakashi silences his sputtering monologue with a raised hand.

He turns to Tenten.

"Captain."

She turns her head to him slowly, and her eyes follow behind on a delay as if reluctant to break her focus on some distant point.

He sees the emptiness there, and it is almost like he can look through her.

"We are leaving."

She nods and stands, adding some coins to the money she already had neatly on the table.

She bows wordlessly to the bartender and makes her way out of the bar with a controlled rigidity that is impressive.

The bartender's mouth hangs open in a fish-like "O."

Kakashi thanks him for keeping this between them. The healthy tip he leaves closes the discussion, and cements the man's cooperation.

He follows behind her, hands jammed in pockets.

"Drunk?" he asks conversationally.

"Probably."

"I see you reported into the medics after you mission."

"That is standard protocol," she returns dryly.

"So it is," he concedes. "Another mission with little sleep and food – A week on soldier pills was it?"

"Give or take," she shrugs.

"Poisoned this time," he notes. "Nasty stuff. If it wasn't for your tolerance for that sort of thing we probably wouldn't be speaking."

"Lucky me," she mutters.

"In fact," he continues, ignoring her, "Shizune tells me that the only thing worse than that particular poison is the antidote. I believe," he looks her up and down, "that you were advised by both Shizune and Sakura to stay in the hospital for observation for the next twenty four hours. When that recommendation was declined, you were to go directly home."

"Sounds vaguely familiar," she says offhandedly.

"Hm," he hums. "As I recall, this particular antidote reacts even worse when alcohol is in the system."

"Do tell," she says, ignoring the beginnings of fire in her body and the needlepricks of pain starting to dance along her nerve endings.

"I can't imagine that you were unaware of this," Kakashi continues, never breaking stride, but noting the thin sheen of perspiration beginning to form along her skin. "Not given both your expertise in these matters and what I am sure the medics told you. Alcohol combined with the byproducts of the antidote breaking down the poison can be fatal."

"It can be," she agrees.

"But?" he asks.

"But not when tempered with the antidote I took on my own as soon as I realized they were using poisoned gas and weapons, and about three years spent building up a tolerance and immunity to multiple compounds including this specific byproduct."

"So you were at the bar because?"

She stops and turns to face him with eyes narrowed in frustration, and momentarily less hollow.

"Because I _really_ needed a fucking drink."

He blinks at her, his posture never changing from hands-in-pocket-relaxed.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, Hokage-sama," she says in a carefully controlled voice, "I have a very long night ahead of me and have to leave for a mission tomorrow. I am going home."

She turns on her heel and strides toward her apartment, ignoring the fact that he is following in her wake.

He sees the tremble in her step.

He is walking alongside of her and she flicks a dark glance at him before returning her concentration to getting back to her own apartment.

Concentration that he can see is waning.

He finally asks:

"Can you make it home?"

Before she can even think to respond, she has a swift and effective reminder one of the other side effects of the poison/antidote/alcohol trifecta.

Blackouts.

Her legs give out and he catches her just in time.

He looks down at her form and sighs.

"I'll take that as a 'no.'"

* * *

_Next Chapter: Rubicon_


	20. x: Hostage

_This chapter falls between Kunoichi's X. On the Edge and XI. Rubicon. I don't own Naruto._

* * *

**Guardian**  
**x. Hostage**

* * *

She does spend some time in the hospital, and even rests an hour or two. Beyond that, however, she had no intention of staying put. She goes home and changes, but the small space is suffocating her, and the memories linger in the corners of the rooms and in molecules of the air.

_"I need a drink" she mutters, and removes herself to the bar._

Neji is on alert.

Danzo disappeared soon after he arrived, but Neji knows he isn't far away. Shin is particularly attuned to Danzo and his energy, but even he can't seem to pinpoint him.

"It is like chasing echoes," he says, returning to Neji.

"Or shadows," the prodigy mutters.

He watches Tenten order one drink and nurse it broodingly. She has tucked herself away in a booth in the back of the bar, and is essentially invisible to almost everyone there. Everyone but the bartender, who brings her drinks. Even the man who places the food in front of her almost forgets her as soon as he walks away.

That is part of being in ANBU; you learn to make yourself invisible. Forgettable.

The minutes slide into one another as Neji looks around for any hint of Danzo or his minions. Shin is by his side, sharp-eyed and ready.

"Does she come here often?" Shin asks suddenly.

Neji considers this.

"Not especially," he allows. "She comes with Gai or Lee occasionally, but this is not somewhere she usually frequents."

"So she must order the same thing every time she comes in?" Shin asks.

Neji frowns. "To an extent. It is rare for her to drink, and she almost never to excess. She does not like risk losing control."

"For someone who doesn't drink here often, or like to lose control, she is getting pretty regular and strong drinks from the bartender," Shin says suspiciously. "Did she even order the last couple?"

Neji pauses.

He doesn't know.

He isn't sure.

He is so intent on looking for Danzo that he hasn't really been watching the bartender. Now that he takes in the somber but glazed look on Tenten's face, something prickles along his spine. The bartender offers her a round, squat glass, she tosses it back, downing the contents in one go before slamming it back on the table.

Neji fixes his gaze on the small glass, and ice slides under his skin.

There are granules on the bottom of the glass.

Something has been mixed in her drink.

The bartender leans over her at the booth and puts a hand on her shoulder.

She slowly turns her head to face him, as if in a trance.

_"You know," he says softly "he wouldn't want to see you like this."_

She stares dumbly at the man, holding his intent gaze.

"Who?" Shin asks Neji. "Gai?"

_"No," she mumbles. "He wouldn't._

_"You wouldn't want him to see you like this, would you?" he asks again sympathetically._

_"No," she murmurs. "I don't."_

_"Then tell him," he urges her, and he tightens his grip on her shoulder._

_"Neji."_

Neji freezes in place, held by the power of her words. He tries to call out to her, but finds he cannot.

The bartender's face melts into a sinister leer, and the voice echoing around it changes.

_"Tell him, Tenten. Spare him the pain. Do this as you have always done. Complete your mission on your own."_

Neji watches in horror as the man leans and whispers something into her ear, and her lips begin to move without sound.

Wisps of black smoke tumble from the bartender's mouth to spill in her ear, and she chants silently, in a daze. The bartender steps back and is making hand seals, now, at an inhumanly fast speed, and she follows.

Neji's heart pounds in his chest, and he feels it being wrenched inside of him, as if someone were trying to sever his remaining ties to the Kunoichi.

Shin cannot cross to Tenten; a barrier has formed around her, and the guardians cannot approach.

A flash of golden light launches at the bartender, but instead of being halted by the barrier, it passes through the man harmlessly, leaving him dazed and empty eyed. The light materializes into Minato, and under his foot is the chest of Danzo, his upper body tangible, but the ends of his limbs fading into a mass of smoke.

"Too late," Danzo taunts. "The damage is done."

The barrier forms around Tenten, and Neji watches as the fabric of the mortal realm flickers around her. He is suddenly released and he races over to her, but he cannot get any nearer than the barrier allows. He slams his hands against it, and energy crackles around his palms.

"Tenten!" he calls to her, trying to keep the note of panic from his voice as he takes in her distant gaze, and her semi-conscious state. "Tenten, wake up!"

"She does not wish you to see her like this," Danzo says with mock pity. "Unfortunately, I was interrupted before she could finish the seal, so you can actually see her, but she cannot sense you, Neji, and she cannot hear you." His smile is twisted and cruel. "She might not have consistently recognized it, but her subconscious was always aware of your presence. Now, she cannot sense you at all. She is, for the first time since your death, truly alone and without you."

Danzo disappears from under Minato's foot, and reappears next to Tenten, passing through the barrier at will to put a possessive hand on her shoulder.

"The poison, the antidote, and the additional powder I had the bartender slip into her drink guarantee that tonight she will be forced to face the battle in her mind. With all hope removed, she will fall, Hyūga."

The bartender stands and blinks twice, clearing his mind. He looks cautiously to Tenten, who is now staring into nothing. He carefully clears away the glassware, and scurries back to the bar.

Neji narrows his eyes at Danzo dangerously.

"Let her go, Danzo," he snarls.

"I think not," he says with dark amusement. "You see, she is finally where I need her to be, and no one can reach her. I shall remain until it is time to harvest her soul."

"How long does that jutsu last?" Shin demands.

"The barrier?" Danzo asks idly. "It doesn't need to last terribly long. She will be dead by tonight." He narrows his eyes greedily. "After taking her own life, her soul belongs to the darkness. To me."

"She does not belong to you, Danzo," Minato points at the man menacingly. "She never will."

"Brave words, Lord Fourth," Danzo sneers. "But empty."

"My husband's words are never empty." Kushina appears at Minato's side, her fingers interlaced in the seal of confrontation.

Neji feels the disorienting the pull as time begins to bend and warp and spin around them.

There is a warm hand on his arm, and suddenly he is outside of the bending time, and his head is clear. He sees Lord Fourth and Kushina moving slowly, as does Danzo, but the mortal realm is moving normally.

He looks down to see Rin's reassuring, if not grim expression. Neji glances back up, and sees himself where he had been a moment ago, angry and glaring at Danzo.

"How..?" he begins to ask.

"Your father," she says, keeping a hand on him. "His spiritual signature is very similar to yours."

"And Danzo won't notice?

Rin shook her head. "Creating that barrier took more out of him than he's willing to admit. Kushina-sama will keep the time around him warped. It should buy us some time until Danzo realizes you have slipped away."

"And then what?" Neji asks.

"And then?" Rink asks. "Then we come up with a new plan."

Neji would have responded, but he is distracted when Kakashi strides in, and approaches Tenten.

Obito comes jogging over.

"Got him as fast as I could," he pants, adjusting his goggles. "I wasn't affected by Kushina-sama's jutsu because of my Kamui, but the mortal time was warped."

"That is why we sent you," Rin says firmly. "You bypassed much of the interference."

Neji watches the bartender explain his concerns to Kakashi, who simply addresses the Kunoichi, and she responds.

Neji sees the barrier around her, but the barrier wavers under Kakashi's command to leave.

"Hold on," Rin says, holding his arm. "Kushina-sama is going to bend time again."

Neji braces himself as the fabric of time distorts about him and they follow after Tenten and Kakashi.

"Don't worry," Rin assures him. "We will protect her. All of us."

Neji nods mutely, and follows after the woman who still holds his heart and his future.

* * *

_Thank you for reading!  
\- Giada_


	21. XI: Rubicon

_The Narutos. I don't own them.  
_

_Also? This might stretch to 24 installments instead of 20, because I have a thing for symmetry and the next chapter is pretty much the midpoint. Just a heads up. :)_

* * *

**Kunoichi  
XI. Rubicon**

* * *

He brings her back to his place for three reasons.

1) He can get there quickly.

2) It is common knowledge in ANBU that she lives out of containment scrolls. Her apartment is Spartan, and neat, but essentially there is a bed and not much else.

3) He is sure everything she needs is either in the scroll she always carries with her or can be found (or a reasonable substitute can be found) in his own home.

He carries her the whole way, and lowers her onto his couch before disappearing into the kitchen.

When he returns, she is awake and staring up at his ceiling.

He helps her sit up.

If she is drunk, she isn't an aggressive or talkative drunk.

She is silent.

He offers her a specific soldier pill and some water.

She takes the water and ignores the soldier pill.

"It won't do anything," she says calmly.

"Humor me," he says with his crinkle-eyed smile.

She mutely takes the pill and finishes the water.

"I'm going home," she says standing. "Thank you for letting me wait out the blackout."

"Going to weather this at home alone?" he asks casually.

"It won't be the first time," she assures him. "I know what to do."

He almost relents.

Something raises the hairs on the back of his neck – a whisper – a warning.

He catches the tiniest of movements in her jaw – a crack in the façade, and with a sudden and frightening clarity, he _knows_.

The demons are back.

Ice slides down his neck, and he is suddenly and viscerally, and grimly certain that if he sends her away to battle alone, she will not keep the darkness at bay.

He does not question why he knows - his years of experience have taught him to trust his instincts.

And his instincts tell him that this is not a battle she can win.

If she is left alone, she will be dead by morning.

That is unacceptable.

"You have two choices," he says in a calm voice with an undertone of authority that is unmistakable iron.

She looks over to him and arches an eyebrow. The pain is starting to slide under her skin, and her already limited options will be nonexistent if she doesn't get home.

"And going through this alone isn't one of them."

Her jaw tightens.

"I am not on assignment, Hokage-sama," she says tightly. "My time is my own."

"True," he says. "But in this instance, Sakura outranks you. By not staying in the hospital, you deliberately disobeyed the orders of a superior officer. You could return to the hospital for the next twenty-four hours per your orders, and that charge will be dropped."

He is several feet away from her, but can feel her whole body tense as she wills herself to remain calm.

"And my other choice?"

"You can weather this with an assigned mission partner. As you know, we are spread a little thin, but I can get you to Gai, Lee, Hinata or Kurenai."

She grimaces, something in her being twisting even as the needles of pain begin to press more insistently along her skin.

"We never abandon our comrades Captain," he says his voice low. "And that includes me. You can stay here, or you can be released to the care of the hospital or another shinobi. Think of it as an excercise in teamwork."

When she says nothing, he continues.

"I didn't recognize the warnings last time," he says looking her over, "but I know the face of one getting ready to battle demons. This time," he says, his face grim, "I will not leave you to face them alone."

She looks over at him, and she knows that soon, she will not be able to be moved.

She has gone through this before; she knows she might not have control of what she says or what she does. She won't have them see her like that. It is too raw a pain to share. She can face her own monsters; she can't face them worrying about her – she can't face the concern that will no doubt stain and strain those bonds.

And she hates hospitals.

They will sedate her. With her physical self immobilized, that leaves her to fight alone and trapped in the terrain of her own mind; the one battlefield where she is never equipped enough; where she can never find the right weaponry.

That is her worst kind of hell.

"This stays between us?" she asks quietly.

He nods.

"The drug," she says, her eyes beginning to tighten, "I am not always coherent when it is in full effect. I… I don't know what I will say, or…"

"Understood," he cuts her off. "I have done a few covert missions in my day, Captain. Besides a gentleman always forgets."

"Since when do you qualify," she half laughs.

"Well then look at it this way," he says lightly. "This spares you from having to turn in a report to the Hokage."

"There is that," she smirks. She looks him up and down and gives a perfunctory nod.

"Then we have to prepare, Hokage-sama. There isn't much time."

The next several moments are spent getting supplies from her scrolls, antidotes, remedies, teas, clothes – anything she needs but might not be able to unseal once this gets into full swing.

She is prepared to do battle.

Over the next five hours her body is wracked with shooting pain and chills – a side effect of the antidote on a weakened system and exacerbated by what probably would have been alcohol poisoning if he hadn't gotten that soldier pill into her. Her teeth chatter, and she breathes meditatively through the pain, keeping her vocalizations to a minimum. Occasionally she lapses into the same trance-like state he found her in, and he realizes she is doing this to weather the worst of the pain.

She can't seem to keep warm.

When even the blazing fire and several blankets cannot warm her, he runs a hot bath.

He is eternally grateful that she used the last shreds of her consciousness to dress in comfortable layers and left extra clothing out.

He gets her down to a tank top and the fitted shorts she thankfully had under her loose cotton pants before lifting her into the steaming water.

The shivers eventually stop, but they give way to another kind of shuddering, and the tears fall silently and in rapid succession.

Still, she will not speak. She will not put words to her pain or her emptiness.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she hears the occasional gasping of an escaped sob as it wracks her body, and wonders where it is coming from. She is quite certain all of hers were released many years ago.

She can taste the metallic hint of blood from where she bit her own lip trying to keep the memories at bay.

She vaguely registers the strong arm against her back as she vomits bile, having eaten nothing but soldier pills for several days. Distantly, she notes the surprisingly gentle fingers holding back her hair. She is given water to rinse her mouth out. She is being helped back into the now-empty tub and she sits numbly while strong fingers wash the tangle of her hair and rinse it with the hand-held showerhead.

Over the next half hour, her lucidity and control return, but her limbs are slow to follow suit.

She needs his help to get out of the tub and towel off.

He helps her shrug into a warm, thick robe she had unsealed – a gift from Sakura that she has never used but has kept with her for reasons she has never been able to articulate. She fishes the shorts out from under the robe and wrings them into the tub before leaving them to dry

He wrings her hair into a towel and is methodically combing through it in stages from the bottom up when he tells her the worst should be over.

She dumbly nods, eyes slowly regaining focus. Her hands are clumsy as she winds her damp hair into a single, loosely coiled bun. She clamps it into place using the odd claw clip Ino had given her – another item never used but dutifully stored, as she had not seen any practical application for the device.

He leaves her to brush her teeth and wash her face, but returns to help her to the couch.

Her limbs are weary and heavy as she curls into her corner and stares into the fire. The blanket dropped over her is soft and worn, and was a gift from Lee purchased on a joint mission many years ago. This she has used often.

She is waiting to have enough energy to exchange her now-dry clothes for her utilitarian sleepwear.

He presses a steaming mug of tea into her hands.

She watches as he pulls the small table over to her and places a plate of food on it.

She inhales the aromatic comfort of the tea, recognizing it as a blend she favors.

Everything toxic is out of her system now – now she just has to recover.

They sit in silence, the crackling of the fire the only sound in the room

"Eat something," he urges.

She glances up at him and he returns her gaze.

"Do I have to phrase that as an order from the Hokage?"

A ghost of a smirk passes across her lips.

"No, Hokage-sama."

It is the only thing she has said in nearly six hours.

He watches her nibble at the toast and pick at the fruit. Mostly she sits back and drinks the tea.

She tucks her legs under her and stares into her mug.

"As of today," he says, taking his seat in a chair across from her, "you are on medical leave."

Her eyebrow quirks but she does not otherwise react.

"Until?"

"Until you can explain to your Hokage why you seem so intent on killing one of his elite ANBU Captains."

Silence.

She can feel his eyes on her.

"I have all night," he says conversationally.

She shifts her gaze to the fire.

"I have a mission tomorrow."

He shrugs.

"Sai can go."

It is a low blow, and they both know it.

Of course Sai is perfectly capable of going; it had been his assignment to begin with.

She arrived on the assignment deck this morning, report in hand. Sai had been there, his placid demeanor replaced with carefully contained grief.

Ino had just miscarried and was scheduled for a D&amp;C tomorrow.

He knew there were no replacements available, but he asked if the mission could be delayed by just one day to allow him to be with his wife.

She immediately informed, not asked, Kakashi that she would go in his place, and could be ready to leave the next morning.

He asked if the medics had cleared her yet. She told him she would be cleared by the next morning.

He agreed, she was assigned, Sai was put on leave effective immediately, and was to return only when Tsunade or Sakura felt it was safe for Ino to be without him.

She sizes him up critically.

"The mission can be offset by one day," he allows. "But I will send him, Captain."

He holds her gaze steadily, and with all of the authority and conviction of not only his position but of his status as the legendary shinobi and hardened war hero, Kakashi the Copy Ninja.

When he speaks it is in absolutes.

"I will not tolerate a threat to one of our shinobi – any of our shinobi - in the field or in the village."

Silence and the flexing of fingers and the smothered sigh of frustration.

"I am not sure what you expect me to say," she finally says.

"Then," he leans back in his chair and taps the space over his heart. "Start here."

He might not have the Sharingan anymore, but nothing escapes Kakashi's eyes.

She smirks and drops her gaze, recognizing her defeat.

"Alright Kakashi," she says quietly.

She slides the robe to the side, the verdant arms of the tattoo just visible above the neckline of her tanktop.

She tugs the neckline down, revealing what he already knew to be there.

"It is as good of a place to start as any."

* * *

Next Chapter: Kunoichi


	22. xi: Alea iacta est

_A/N: I do not own Naruto. _

* * *

**Guardian**  
**xi. ****Alea iacta est**

* * *

It takes Neji a moment to register what is happening.

One moment Rin and Obito are anchoring him as Kushina warps the fabric of time and space. In the next instant, he feels complete disorientation before a sudden stillness.

"It will be safe here," Obito says, his Sharingan fading to black.

"Where are we?" Neji asks.

"A small, stable pocket of time," Obito explains. "I pulled us in using my Kamui. We can watch from here, but Danzo can't sense us.

Neji looks to where Obito is pointing. There are two 'windows' into reality. One shows the face-off against Danzo; the other shows Kakashi and Tenten. From this vantage point, he can clearly see distortion of time and the bending of reality around the mortal realm.

"Is that us?" he asks, pointing to what looks like copies of Obito, Rin, and himself flickering near Danzo and the others.

Rin shakes her head. "Temporal echoes. We stayed put long enough to put out a few refracted images of ourselves."

"To what end?" Neji asks.

"Think of it like shadow clones," Rin offers, "but with chakra signatures. Danzo isn't looking for Obito and I, but can still sense our presence on his plane. With your father taking your place, any echoes of your chakra signature will be chalked up to Kushina's jutsu. Danzo does not yet realize we have left to look after Tenten. He isn't concerned about Kushina right now, because he believes that you are also incapacitated and Tenten is beyond help."

"If what he said is true, she might be," Neji says grimly. "No matter the rationalization, she has faced death many times in the last few years – to the point of seeking it. She does not fear death. She does, however, fear being trapped in her own mind." Neji shakes his head. "She refuses to stay in hospitals, lest they sedate her. If she gets to that point of isolation, there is no telling exactly what she'll do."

"She is with Kakashi," Obito states, watching as Tenten wakes on Kakashi's couch. "He won't let her come to harm."

"The question is can he stop her," Neji says, as Tenten begins negotiating her departure from Kakashi's.

_"I'm going home," she says standing. "Thank you for letting me wait out the blackout." _

_"Going to weather this at home alone?" he asks casually._

_"It won't be the first time," she assures him._

He can see Kakashi waiver, and trepidation slices through Neji.

"Don't listen to her!" He demands harshly, panic crawling along his skin. "She won't make it, Kakashi!"

Rin and Obito exchange glances, and Obito puts a gruff hand on Neji's shoulder as he releases Rin from their hiding place. She is immediately at Kakashi's side.

"You must stay with her," she tells him. "The darkness is back, and she cannot be left alone, Kakashi. She needs your help." Rin puts her hand on his shoulder. "You know what will happen if she leaves here."

_Something raises the hairs on the back of his neck – a whisper – a warning. _

_He catches the tiniest of movements in her jaw – a crack in the façade._

_The demons are back._

_The thought comes from nowhere, but he suddenly knows with dire certainty, that if he sends her home alone, she will not keep the demons at bay. _

"She will die, Kakashi," Rin says gently. "You cannot allow her to leave. She cannot face this darkness alone."

Neji can see the shift in Kakashi's jaw, and the battle resolve that has made him a legend in his own time.

_ "You have two choices," he says in a calm voice with an undertone of authority that is unmistakable iron._

Neji sighs in grateful relief. "Thank you," he says quietly.

Obito drops his hand back to his side. "You are welcome."

They watch in silence as Tenten prepares to weather the physical aftereffects of the antidote and poison.

Obito brings them both back into the mortal realm, and Neji can still feel the ripples of temporal distortion from Kushina.

"To Danzo, not enough time has passed for us to have left," Rin explains, watching as Tenten carefully unpacks and organizes her belongings.

"What did Danzo give her?" Neji asks. "What will it do to her?"

"There you are!" Chiyo appears next to them with exasperation. "That Uzumaki woman made it almost impossible to get to you," she grumbles. "I kept arriving ten minutes from now."

"You…. What?" Neji asks, blankly.

"I can't be sure what he gave her," Chiyo continues, ignoring Neji, "but from the looks of things she'll just have to wait it out. I suspect whatever it was, it was simply to make her lose enough control so that he could influence her into keeping you away," she turns and eyes the Hyūga. "Given what else is in her system, he wouldn't need the substance to do much more than that."

"Is it something we have to counteract?" Rin asks.

"Unlikely," the old woman shakes her head. "That tea," she points to something Tenten has unsealed. "Make sure she drinks that when the poison runs its course. That blend is often administered to those recuperating from venomous or poisonous attacks.

"Why Tenten?" Obito asks, suddenly.

"Because he thinks she will fall," Neji responds evenly.

"No, that's not what I mean," Obito continues. "Why make Tenten fall? He has gone through some serious effort to target her. Why? Especially if her own pattern of behavior makes it look like his intervention hasn't been necessary?"

"I think he is drawn to any soul that teeters on the brink of falling," Chiyo explains, watching with a practiced eye as the symptoms onset and begin to override Tenten's control.

"No," Obito shakes his head. "It is more than that. It has to be." He looks over to Rin. "He's been pursuing her. We've watched – there are other souls that would be far easier to reap. Why hers?"

Neji pauses.

"Why hers?" he muses. Danzo had no quarrel with Tenten in life. If Danzo had been targeting Sasuke, or even Naruto, Neji could understand it. But Tenten? What made her different from anyone else in Konoha?

Chiyo frowns, her wrinkled face puckering in concentration. "I have no connection to her either," she says slowly. "Yet here I am."

Neji turns to her. "Because of Sakura."

"And Naruto," she agrees.

"And I was spared from the darkness because of Naruto," Obito adds. "It allowed me to join Rin so we could watch over Kakashi."

"Danzo hated Kakashi," Neji says slowly, reflecting on what he has learned in the afterlife, "or at least recognized that he could derail his ambitions to become Hokage once Lady Tsunade was incapacitated."

"But what is his goal now?" Obito presses.

The back of Neji's neck tingles. He is certain Obito is on to something, but what?

Chiyo purses her lips and studies Kakashi as he ministers to Tenten.

"Stay with her," she finally instructs. "I know who we need to ask."

She is gone before Neji can reply.

He stands as close to Tenten as the barrier will let him, careful not to touch the barrier itself.

"It might alert Danzo to where you are," Rin cautions as she sits near Kakashi, occasionally giving gentle instruction on how to care for the kunoichi. When she cannot get warm, despite multiple blankets and a seat in front of the fire, she advises him to put her in the warm bath. He is less awkward with Tenten than one might suspect, perhaps recognizing the pain and struggle of a fellow soldier.

Neji, meanwhile, watches in helpless frustration as she retreats in her own mind, where he cannot reach her. He recognizes how she copes with the pain and slips into a form of self-hypnosis, clenching her jaw and biting her lip to keep from crying out. When he would step closer, Obito puts a hand on his shoulder and holds him steady.

It is agony.

Time is still in flux about them, and occasionally he sees refractions of moments ago, or moments to come overlaid with the current state of time.

It is something in one of those refractions that stiffens his spine.

"Danzo," he says sharply. "He's coming."

Hizashi appears first, materializing by his son. "Danzo will be here shortly," he says, quickly assessing the situation. "Be at the ready!"

The first wisps of smoke are almost unnoticeable. They curl around her form as she slips further and further into the isolation of her own mind and away from the world around her. Minato appears next to Obito, having traveled instantly to the seal he had placed upon his former student.

The barrier around Tenten flickers, and Danzo stands over her, his darkness filling the air around her, his strength and power palpable.

"You are all fools," he sneers. "What could you possibly hope to accomplish? You have done precisely what I knew you would do." He declares triumphantly, "Because of your misplaced sensibilities I will be the victor tonight with not one, but two souls."

They all glare at him, but his smug self-satisfaction does not waiver.

"I knew once I warned you, you would seek out Kakashi's help," Danzo's visible eye is alight with the confidence of a battle already won. "Who else in the mortal world could hold any sway over her?"

He shakes his head with what might have been a pitying look, had his lone eye not glinted so menacingly. "She would not burden another with her secrets or her weakness. Kakashi is the only person left alive who can really sway her."

He turns to Neji. "And do you know why, Huyga Neji? Why Kakashi can reach your Kunoichi when no one else can?" Danzo puts a hand on Tenten's back, and she instantly retches. Neji instinctively begins to leap forward, but his father grips his shoulder firmly and holds him in place.

Neji tries to steady his breathing, but it is hard to do as he watches the shadows slither lightning-fast over her back and down her arm. Their sinuous movements circle down across her hand and they wrap along the emptiness at the end of her fingers.

Neji feels a cold tug at the core of his gut, and Danzo smirks.

"You think you are the only one connected to this woman?" he asks. "You are a fool, Huyga Neji. A dead fool pining for someone who cannot accept your death. Perhaps it is because you never left her, she has never been able to heal. Some part of her always knew you were near, and yet she couldn't find you, no matter how she tried. She has been taking the deadliest of assignments, all in the hopes of rejoining you in death."

Danzo spreads his hands eloquently."And tonight, ironically, in the safety of her village, she will finally succeed." His expression narrows into something dangerously dark, "And when she does, there will finally be a crack in the defenses of the shortsighted fools who are destroying Konoha."

He crooks a finger, and part of the smoke and sinew snakes back up her arm and to his hand, while the other winds its way along an invisible path like dew sliding down spider silk. Danzo lazily pulls on his rope of shadow, and the darkness races through midair to slide up Kakashi's fingers and anchor around his wrist.

"You see," Danzo says with a chilling satisfaction. "There is a thread of fate that winds between these two souls." Danzo reaches over and plucks the shadow-string and watches it vibrate. Kakashi frowns and absently flicks his wrist before reaching to put a hand on her back to calm the retching. The shadows that linger there dispel as his firm touch, and the string is no longer visible.

"Your bond to her is too well forged to be altered or truly used against her," Danzo scoffs. "But this bond… this bond is still forming. It is malleable. It can be exploited."

"This makes no sense," Obito snarls. "What could you possibly gain from this, Danzo?"

Danzo rests his hands in front of him air and his cane materializes under them. "Everything," he says, eye glittering. "She will fall, and become a formidable ally to me. Her death will weigh heavily on Kakashi, and he will lament being unable to protect someone and yet again. Her death will be keenly felt by her generation," he says with a cruel smile. "And it is that generation that is holding the new order of Konoha together. It will be a crack in the impenetrable hope Uzumaki Naruto has spread through the nations, and it will falter."

He looks to her, hungrily.

"That is all I need – a minor faltering in those in power to upset that balance of power. A moment for those fools that believe this peace will be anything other than temporary to be distracted. Then those I have left behind – those I still influence – they will begin to shore up Konoha's defenses once again."

Danzo glares at Kakashi.

"Kakashi is a fool. He thinks the world has changed. It has not. Shinobi will still war and fight, and Konoha will be overrun if action is not taken."

"So you are still as power hungry and misguided as ever, Danzo," Lord Third shakes his head sadly, materializing next to Neji. "You are blind, Danzo. You have always been."

"On the contrary, Hiruzen," Danzo's smile is cool, but his bandages fade, and his clothing alters. "I can see more than you can possibly imagine."

His right eye glows red, and he flexes his Sharingan arm in the anticipation of battle.

"Leave this place," Lord Third commands. "Leave now, or face the consequences."

Danzo laughs.

"Consequences?" he challenges bitterly. "I had to watch as you weakened our village, Hiruzen. I had hoped that after your death, I might be able to restore order, but your own student was determined to block me at every turn. When she stupidly drained so much of her power that she ended up in a coma, I was finally in the position to take control. Nara tried to block me, but the Daimyo knew that your methods had almost destroyed us all."

The eyes in Danzo's arm begin to twitch with irritation.

"To have gone so far simply to be murdered by the Uchiha brat who had no more love for Konoha than any of our enemies?"He glowers at them all. "Don't lecture me about consequences. Now it is your turn to suffer."

He puts his hand firmly on Tenten's shoulder, and she retches again, more violently this time. Kakashi frowns, looking to the clock and then back again to Tenten with clear concern.

Lord Third's face molds into steely resolve, and his form shifts into his battle gear. "The suffering ends tonight," he says gravely. "Including yours."

Danzo gives a mirthless chuckle. "I am not suffering, Hiruzen. I am _reveling._ You cannot match my power now. I own the darkness."

"If you believe that," The former Hokage takes up his battle stance, "Then you are far more of a fool than I could have ever guessed."

"If it is a fight you want," Danzo says ominously. "Then I shall oblige you." He holds out his arms and the shadows billow and writhe around him. He is engulfed in the darkness, his entire form becoming black as pitch, save for the glowing red of the Sharingan eyes embedded in his form.

"I have merely been entertaining myself with watching this drama unfold," Danzo sneers, his voice echoing strangely. "Now I shall claim my victory."

"Oh-ho!" Chiyo says, cackling in glee. "So you did manage to stall him," she elbows Lord Third gracelessly.

"Such a shame, Danzo," she challenges, her wrinkled face taking on a decidedly dangerous expression. "I'm guessing you spent all that time bragging, when you should have pressed what little advantage you had."

Neji looks to his father, noting the small grin tugging at his lips.

"It's a good thing you were such a bastard in life, Danzo," Chiyo taunts. "It made my job far easier."

"Job?" Danzo scoffs. "What job could they possibly assign to a haggard crone like yourself? Your powers cannot touch me in this form."

"Maybe not," she narrows her eyes, and all traces of joking vanish. "But I think perhaps you'd like to resurvey the battlefield."

There is an electricity in the air, and a thousand glowing points of light shine in the distance. In a sudden starfall, they rocket toward them, plummeting to the ground.

But they do not strike.

They materialize.

And the battlefield is suddenly awash with allies.

Asuma. Itachi. Shisui. Hashirama. Tobirama. Jiraiya. Nagato. Konan. Yahiko. Zabuza. Haku. Kisame. Minato. Kushina. Shin. Inoichi. Shikaku. The Fourth Kazekage. Gaara's mother and uncle. Hanzo. All of the jinchuriki. Shinobi and Samurai that fell during the Fourth Shinobi War, and scores of others.

Danzo's eyes shift wildly over the battlefield, but the line of his jaw remains set and determined.

"You threaten the living," Lord Third says, tightening his grip on his staff. "You threaten Konoha and the peace of our lands. You threaten our children." He slams his staff to the ground. "You shall not be permitted to succeed."

"You are an eternal fool," Danzo growls. His hands shoot outward, and massive lumbering shapes materialize from the darkness surrounding him. The shadows split and morph into deathly soldiers – wraiths of the afterlife. Warriors in greyscale shimmer into sight; fallen shinobi who have crossed into the darkness. It is an army, and it is under Danzo's command.

"And like all fools," Danzo clenches his fist. "You will be crushed."

* * *

_A/N: Chapters XI. and xi. have related titles. 'Rubicon' is the river Julius Caesar crossed illegally, and thereby committed himself and his troops to war. Once setting upon this irreversible course of action, he is credited with saying 'alea iacta est,' or, the 'the die has been cast.' The euphemism 'Crossing the Rubicon' is synonymous with 'past the point of no return.' For a much more eloquent explanation, see below. Thank you so much for reading! - GL_

* * *

We know from [Caesar's journals] that Caesar is not taking this lightly. He knows that if he marches on Rome with his armies, then he is a public enemy, and that he will either have to win, or die. For a Roman patrician like Julius Caesar there is no life without military service; there is no life without service to the state. He cannot simply 'go native' and stay in Gaul, and he does realise that if he goes back to Rome, he would be killed. At this time the northernmost border of the Roman territory in Italy is the River Rubicon. Once someone crosses the River Rubicon, he's in Roman territory. A general must not cross that boundary with his army – he must do what the Romans call lay down his command, which means surrender his right to order troops, and certainly not be carrying weapons. Caesar and his armies hesitate quite a while at this river while Caesar decides what to do, and Caesar tells us that he informs his soldiers that it's a little tiny bridge across the river, but once they cross it they'll have to fight their way all the way to Rome, and Caesar is well aware that he's risking not just his own life, but those of his loyal soldiers, and he might not win. Pompey is a formidable enemy. It's also impossible to avoid the fact that Caesar was attacking the state, and as a patrician Roman this would have been very difficult for him, equivalent to beating up your father. He wouldn't have done any of this lightly. Finally he makes a decision, it's time to go, and he uses a gambling metaphor: he says 'Roll the dice', 'Alea jacta est'.[1] Once the dice start rolling they cannot be controlled, even though we don't know what it is as the dice roll and tumble. Julius and his men swiftly cross the river and they march double time toward Rome, where they almost beat the messengers sent to inform the Senate of their arrival.

— Titchener, _To Rule Mankind and Make the World Obey[2]_


	23. - Convergence -

_Hello, friends!_

_I have missed you!_

_Before I turn over the reading, I have some housekeeping to take care of, first._

_If you are returning to this story, you may have noticed I re-ordered the chapters._

_When I began writing the story, I intended for Kunoichi and Guardian to be read in order and independently. As I was writing, however, it became clear that these stories need to be read simultaneously to make sense._

_Since I have posted more of Kunoichi than of Guardian, I have to catch Guardian up. The reader can still choose to read the stories independently by reading every other chapter (see outline below), and inserting this chapter 'Convergence' in between xi and xii. Please note that after this next update, the Guardian chapters fall before the Kunoichi chapters. Cross posting on AO3 and Tumblr!_

_**Warning for depictions of death/suicide. I'm not very familiar with how to 'warn' properly with regard to potentially triggering content. If you feel I have done so incorrectly, please inbox me.**_

* * *

**Kunoichi and Guardian**  
**-Convergence-**

* * *

The battlefield might have seemed disproportionately large to accommodate the fight of a fight over the fate of the soul of one, lone woman.

But the battle isn't for just her, and Neji knows it. Through a strange twist of fate, she has become a lynchpin and a pawn in this war between the light and dark. She wages a battle internally even as one happens on a totally different plane of existence.

Neji can't get close to her.

Danzo's barrier has done its job, and he is unable to approach her, or speak to her heart.

She is deaf to him.

He feels a strange and gnawing ache in his own soul; this is actually the first time in his life or death that his connection to her has been mitigated in any way.

But he doesn't have time to be frightened or pained.

He is all grim determination, and single-minded in purpose.

She will not fall to the darkness.

"Do not let any of those shapeless beings touch you," Hizashi tells his son. "They will latch into any darkness in your soul, and feed on it. They will gain strength from your anguish – and you more than any of us has a right to feel that way right now."

"Understood," Neji grimaces. He crouches into an offensive position, and his eyes shift furiously over the battlefield. "I need to get to her," he says. "No matter what."

"Stay vigilant," Hizashi replies, adopting his own defensive stance.

Neji centers his mind and reigns in all of his energy. He wills his being into focus, concentrating on where he senses his connection to Tenten. He reminds himself that the bond hasn't been severed; it is just being interfered with. He is still bonded to her, and she to him.

He can reach her.

The air pulsates with a guttural battle cry, and the war begins. Lord Third immediately charges Danzo, but he refuses to engage him.

"Not yet, Hiruzen," his voice is inky and cold. "I have an army to attend."

The dead swarm him, and the Hokage once known as the 'professor' has his hands full.

Neji notes that Danzo has not sent the shadow creatures to that battle, and suspects it isn't out of any lingering respect for Sarutobi Hiruzen, but out of a desire to make the man fight and suffer long enough to witness his triumph.

"Katon!"

An enormous fireball rockets past, and incinerates the soldiers to Neji's left flank. He nods a quick acknowledgment to Itachi, but the man has already moved on to his next prey.

It is impossible to follow each individual fight. Legendary shinobi are all locked in an immortal combat, unified in the fight against a common enemy.

Neji cuts down another enemy, and reaches out with his senses for any hint of Tenten. Time and space distort around him, and he focuses on the connection he knows is still there, even if she cannot sense it.

"How to go about it?" Danzo taunts, far above the fray.

"Once I have her under my control...shall I let her kill Kakashi and then take her own life?" he asks. "That will crush the spirit of Konoha as well as bring her to my side. Or, perhaps, she should just take her own life while Kakashi watches," he suggests. "I can force Kakashi to take his own life after that – he can die just as his father did."

Neji feels the rage boil up within him, but he swallows it and forces it into his veins. Every micromeasure of energy channels into his concentration, and his actions.

For all of his boasting, Danzo is losing ground.

"You will not win, Danzo," The Third Hokage calls out. "Stand down."

"Never," Danzo snarls.

The next instant, Lord Third launches for Danzo, and they are engaged in a one-on-one battle that makes the very air around them scintillate with electricity.

Neji and the others fight their way through the forces, but there is no end in sight.

"This will not end until Danzo is taken down."

Neji looks over his shoulder to find Nara Shikaku battling at his back.

"What do you suggest?" Neji asks grimly, deflecting another attack.

"We have to force his hand," the elder Nara says firmly, eyes darting over the battlefield. "Lord Third is already at work."

Sarutobi Hiruzen finally breaks through Danzo's soldiers, and in a blink is in front of Danzo.

"You speak of protecting Konoha and sacrifice," he says coldly, "but you do neither. You arrange for others to sacrifice themselves because you know that you alone cannot protect Konoha."

"Lies!" Danzo yells harshly.

"You've never protected Konoha," he presses on. "You protected your own interests and your fragile ego, but never the village. You are what you have always been, Danzo. A coward."

"Enough!" Danzo roars. "I will show you my power. I will prove that I am right. And when this feeble excuse for peace between nations and villages collapses, I will continue to protect Konoha from the vain and childish hopes that you stupidly and relentlessly instilled into this generation, Hiruzen!"

"For the last time," Lord Third shakes his head sadly. "Stand down, Danzo. This is a battle you cannot win. You will forfeit everything if you give yourself over to this madness."

"I will not stand down!" Danzo declares, mania fraying the edges of his voice. "Especially when victory is at hand! I will not lose!"

He dodges Hiruzen's attack, but sluggishly.

It appears Chiyo is right; the battle has taken more out of the ex-leader of ROOT than he would ever admit.

But then something happens that he can't possibly have accounted for.

The tiny spark that is inside Tenten.

It begins to flicker.

Neji senses it before he sees it.

There is a warmth near his heart, and it is spreading.

And he realizes that this light – this last remaining fraction of the Tenten he has always known rekindled by the infinite and indomitable spirit of Naruto – is nothing short of magic.

The flame is calling to him.

It is calling to all of them.

Tiny pinpoints of light glow before flaring in the breast of all of his comrades, reignited by Tenten's lone, small flame.

And it is spreading.

It is then that Neji understands just how enormous the scope of Naruto's influence has become.

This light that he shared with Tenten is speaking to the light he has shared with all of them – either directly, like when he freed Neji's heart, or indirectly, like protecting Hanzo's people long after he was gone.

The power that Naruto wields is nothing more or less than hope.

And that hope rockets between them all until they are glowing.

But it doesn't stop there.

Each member of the darkness shrinks away from the light. One of the soldier's strikes a dark being, and a light flickers in its middle. The light grows and the darkness melts, and weary soldier now stands where the monster did.

Hope, it would seem, is contagious.

The battlefield shifts dramatically.

The darkness is not only being defeated, it is being destroyed.

Souls are given hope and are freed, and Danzo is losing soldiers by the score.

"No," Danzo whispers, eyes darting about frantically. "No, this cannot be!"

"But it is," Lord Third says with undeniable pride,even as the light begins to wash over the battlefield. "It is over, Danzo."

Danzo seethes

Despite his enemies closing in, he refuses to believe he has been backed into a corner.

"Never," he cries. "I shall have my victory! I shall have my revenge!"

His words reverberate around them all, even as he disappears to reappear by the window to Tenten's realty.

Neji watches in shock as the man – all ink black and glittering coal – shoves his hand into the mortal realm, smoke and ether drifting off to curl and blacken the air.

"He is poisoning them," Chiyo is suddenly at Neji's side. "If he pollutes them enough; if they are susceptible to his lies, he can control them."

"You will not win," Danzo snarls. "And you cannot reach them in time."

The eyes on his arms begin to spin and twitch, and Neji can feel the world around him begin to bend and shift.

"So many things can happen to a heart in pain," he taunts, gaspingly. "You can't stop them all from happening. Tonight, she will fall."

"What is he doing?" Obito asks, looking around as the very air about them hums with malevolent energy.

"Fracturing time," Chiyo says sharply.

"What does that mean?" Neji braces himself.

"It means that Danzo has many ways to corrupt a heart," Jiraiya stands next to him. "And we are going to see them all."

Neji watches as the image of Kakashi and Tenten begins to shift and multiply and overlay time and time again before bursting apart. Suddenly, he is watching the shattered fragments scatter above them, each reflecting a different image.

"Clever bastard," Chiyo grumbles begrudgingly. "He has used what little power he has left to split the time around your friends, allowing multiple scenarios – all suggested and orchestrated by him – to play out simultaneously. He is hoping to destroy them as many times as possible, and is counting on you not being able to stop all of them."

"Are these real?" he asks, watching as the windows into Kakashi and Tenten's world slide farther apart, and the images flicker to motion.

"Yes and no," Kushina interjects. "Any of these could happen, or could already have happened, or could be happening."

"Surely one of them is real… or at least more real than the others," Neji's eyes dart from scene to scene.

"Depends on when you are asking," she replies grimly. "But one thing is for certain," she watches the scenes play out, or replay, or stop then start. "He intends for them both to die."

"Why?" Neji asks, desperate to understand.

"Because he needs to kill hope," Kushina says, the realization dawning on her. "Just as her light reached us all, and spoke to the light Naruto kindled in each of us, it can be turned against her friends and Hokage."

And suddenly it all makes sense.

"He wants to break Kakashi," Neji breathes.

He looks up to the scenes playing out ahead of him.

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.``.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`

_Kakashi leaves her only for a moment – just to get her a robe. He leaves her wrapped in a towel in the bathtub, and assures her he will return quickly. It couldn't have been more than a minute._

_She is sitting in the tub with her knees drawn to her chest, and her head pressed to her knees. The white towel draped over her shoulders is caught in the fingers clasped around her legs._

_He urges her to stand, but she doesn't move._

_"Tenten?" he asks gently, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Can you stand?"_

_She slowly shakes her head no._

_And that is when he notices the blood._

_The towel masked the sight of the red liquid writhing down her legs to swirl with the water draining there. He dashes forward quickly, dropping the robe._

_"Tenten!" he says in authoritative despair. "What happened?"_

_"I am sorry," her voice is low, and she speaks into the tops of her thighs. "But I can't leave him. Not when he needs me."_

_"Who needs you? " Kakashi asks furiously. "What are you –"_

_He has moved the towel and pulled her arm forward with surprising ease._

_The gash runs along the inside of her arm from wrist to elbow. He doesn't need to look to know it has a mate on her other arm._

_A sob chokes him, and closes his throat. He holds her arm in the towel and clenched fingers release the thin blade to clatter in the porcelain of the tub._

_He summons Pakkun and the dogs to get a medic immediately, but he knows it is too late._

_She has lost too much blood._

_They find her wrapped in a dark towel, nestled in his lap. He holds her in the tub, and wonders what fragment of his soul washed down the drain with her blood._

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.``.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`

Neji steps back from the horrific image with a whispered 'No,' even as the other scenes play out around him.

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.``.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`

_"Do you know what I am now?" She asks, her voice low and menacing. She holds the knife to his throat, and his eyes spark dangerously._

_"I am the darkness," she whispers, and the pinprick at his neck is the last thing he feels, numbing his body. It is a small mercy before she slits his throat._

_No one knows she is here. Not yet. She leaves to kill again._

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.``.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`

_He holds her to him, a hand trailing over her body. She arches against him, gasping as he rakes teeth down her throat and drags a hand over her thigh. It devolves into a strange, brutal shared comfort. It is primal and ugly, and it is what Gai witnesses._

_"Kakashi! What are you doing to-"_

_They don't hear him over their ragged cries, and it takes a moment for him to realize she is crying._

_He sees the spark of guile in her features, and narrows his eyes at her suspiciously._

_She shoves him off, and there is a knife in her hand._

_"Sensei!" she calls to Gai. "He… he took advantage of me! I.. I was poisoned, and he… he…"_

_Gai's eyes darken, as she weeps in artless fabrication and stumbles into his arms, pulling her clothing tightly around her._

_"Gai," Kakashi gasps in ragged breaths, "it isn't what you-"_

_"I saw you, Kakashi," he growls, wrapping an arm around her. "How could you-"_

_His eyes widen and he falls to the ground, the weapon wedged between his shoulder blades._

_She nonchalantly stands to kick the body to the side._

_Kakashi moves to intercept, but she fires a weapon that grazes his thigh._

_He grips his leg in pain as she dresses quickly, suddenly in full ANBU gear._

_Lee comes to the window, and sees his mentor staring at the ceiling with near-dead eyes.._

_"Tenten, what –"_

_"Another time," she smirks, and leaps out of the window._

_Lee rushes to Gai who weeps silently as his life ebs into nothing._

_"Gai-sensei," Lee clutches the man tightly. "What happened. Who did this - did-"_

_"It was Tenten," Kakashi says bitterly pressing a bloodied towel to his leg._

_"No, she couldn't," Lee cried. "She-!_

_"It is true, Lee," Gai says tightly. "I failed you," he rasps. "All of you. I am so sorry, my precious students,..."_

_Lee is still weeping openly when Kakashi's team arrives. Sakura kneels by Gai, but can do nothing._

_She begins to tend to Kakashi._

_Naruto and Sasuke pursue, and Sai stays to comfort Lee._

_She knows she will be caught - her life was forfeit the moment she attacked Kakashi._

_Tenten waits until they have her – Sasuke and Naruto both – and then releases the explosions._

_She detonates the trap laid weeks ago, and Konoha burns._

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.``.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`

_Her motions are not her own; she is forced to watch as one trapped behind her own eyes as her body moves of its own accord to slice flesh and bone._

_Kakashi collapses and bleeds at her feet, and she stares at the knife in terror._

_"Kakashi – I didn't… I couldn't know…!"_

_"Get help," he gurgles, and she despairs._

_She goes for help, but Gai and Lee are away. She turns to the only person she can think to, and finds Hinata at home. She begins to ask for help, but then warns her off sharply when she feels her sentience being hijacked again._

_"Run, Hinata," are the last word she gasps before she is forced to be a spectator to the horror._

_But Hinata would never abandon a friend._

_Even as the light fades from her eyes, she forgives Tenten._

_Now, beyond broken, Tenten attacks her enemy the only way she can think of, and deals herself a wound far graver than the one she dealt Kakashi._

_She dies within minutes._

_Kakashi is saved but gravely injured. He steps down as Hokage, and only lives a year before taking his own life. Konoha looks to Naruto, but he is too young, and has too much sorrow in his heart. Deciding to train, he leaves the village._

_The hope is lost._

_And the fall of Konoha and the rest of the shinobi world begins._

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.``.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`

_She is overcome with a madness, and suddenly sees him as an enemy to be obliterated._

_He has the sense to send for help even as he leads her to a training ground to keep her distracted- hopefully until she can be subdued without causing herself harm._

_The grim reality of the situation is achingly clear to him as she meets him in combat with the fire of insanity painted across her brow._

_And now, it is kill or be killed._

_The medics arrive to find two bodies broken and bleeding. She is gone – her last breath evaporated more than a quarter of an hour ago. He is fading, and apologizing and swathed in torn flesh and blood._

_Too much of it is hers._

_Weeks later, it is still in his skin and no soap can take it away._

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.``.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`

Neji closes his eyes and reaches out with everything he is, trying to feel her being against his – to find the real her among the slivers of time and possible versions of herself.

He sorts through the macabre hall of mirrors that is the fractured reality surrounding him, listening for the original in a mass of distorted echoes.

"Where are you?" he whispers, focusing beyond the chaos. "Come back to me, Tenten."

He hears Kakashi's voice, faint and gentle. She is speaking to him, with a leaden calm - one of resigned sadness and iron resolve.

His eyes snap open and he scours the images dancing in the air, eyes widening as one shimmers into being not very far away.

It is not obsidian edged or pulsating with Danzo's inflicted hate.

It is pale and wan and untouched by the rampant despair.

This, then, is not one of Danzo's fabrications.

This is - or could be - real.

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.``.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`

_"Care to explain?"_

_She holds his steady gaze and there is no sound or movement for a full minute, save for the flicker and crackle of the fire._

_Finally, she puts down her tea and rises slowly. He watches her cross to the fireplace, resting her hand on the mantle to steady herself and gather her thoughts and words._

_"I am a Kunoichi of Konoha," she says slowly, her eyes on the flames. "I am an inheritor of the Will of Fire, and a survivor of the Fourth Shinobi War. I am not afraid to die."_

_"No," Kakashi's voice is clear from his seat behind her. "But why are you afraid to live?"_

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.``.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`

The image glows in a pale, warm light, and the echoes of Danzo's near-by nightmares fray around the edges.

He reaches for it, and he feels the electricity of it against his fingertips.

Tenten looks up suddenly, eyes wide.

Kakashi is stone-still and battle ready; energy pricks up and down his spine.

"What is it," he asks her in a low, serious voice.

Her eyes are bright with unshed tears, and she struggles to keep her breathing and heart rate steady.

"It's him," she whispers, but there is no fear in her voice.

She looks over his shoulder, beyond where she can see, giving a tiny shake of her head in disbelief.

"It's whom, Tenten?"

There is an incredulous silence for just a moment, and then she whispers,

"Neji."

And with that single whisper of the name so long banished from her tongue - the tide turns.

Danzo watches in disbelief as all of the images, all of the realities shatter into nothing.

"Tenten," Kakashi looks at her pointedly. "Look."

She follows his gaze to the tattoo over her heart, that she revealed to him, not a moment before. She looks back to him, disbelief and fear etched in her face, and he raises a tentative hand to the mark.

His fingers hover over the bare flesh inked green, that has begun to glow.

And although neither he, nor Tenten can see it, her own light suffuses through her skin and into his fingertips, soaking into his marrow. The spider-silk of silver that connects them shifts from translucent to incandescent as he presses fingers and palm to the mark.

Her light - once rekindled by Naruto - blazes under her skin and races along his arm.

The warmth startles them both, and she reflexively places her hand over his, anchoring herself against from falling over the precipice of hope.

"ENOUGH!" Danzo roars, and Tenten and Kakashi both look around sharply, although they cannot see where the inhuman sound is coming from. Tenten flicks her wrists and metal appears between her fingers as she steps protectively in front of Kakashi as an ANBU Captain protecting the Hokage.

"It is finished, Danzo," Hiruzen manifests before him. "There is nothing left for you to do but surrender."

Danzo's eyes dart between them all as the Sharingan eyes in his arms roll about wildly.

"Never," he snarls, backing away. "Her soul is mine."

A thunderclap booms about them as he pours himself, inkblack into the living realm, flooding the room in billows of jet smoke and suffocating pressure.

"Danzo," Kakashi growls, crouching into a more defensive stance, and sorely missing his sharingan.

"Lord Sixth," Danzo sneers. "You dared take my title - trying to erase my legacy. So I shall return the favor."

He fills the room as an atramentous cloud of roiling malevolence, snuffing out the fire, and swallowing any lingering light and oxygen whole.

But still, they stand firm, and that damning mark etched into the skin above her heart glows in defiance.

There is a terrible silence for half of a second before she doubles over with a guttural cry of pain.

Startled, Kakashi tries to catch her from falling, but she shoves him back, letting the weapons clatter from her fingers.

Cruel laughter echoes around them as the darkness spirals in a vortex, piercing her abdomen and diffusing throughout her being.

She is jerked to standing, her back arched as she fights against the force filling her limbs and washing through her veins. Her eyes fill black, and her cheeks become sunken in an ashen face. Still, she fights, even as tendrils of midnight curl out of her mouth on ragged breaths.

"Kill him," Danzo demands, and metal once again glitters between her fingers.

"N...No," she grits her teeth in refusal, her voice constricted to a strangled grunt by the effort of resistance. She drops to one knee, gripping the weapons so tightly that blood drips from her fingers as she refuses to heed Danzo's demands.

"KILL HIM!" he bellows, and the very air shakes with his wrath.

She looks up to Kakashi, her face pinched in pain.

"R...Run," she harshes out.

Kakashi puts his own weapons down. "I won't fight you," he puts his hands up in plain view. "And I won't leave you alone."

She shakes her head violently.

"I'm not alone," she says, and despite the pain contorting her features, a knowing smile tugs at the corners of her lips.

"Am I,...Neji?"

And with those three small words, Neji feels the full force of their connection slam back into place and all barriers between them shatter.

She must feel it, too, as something washes over her, pushing back the rigidity of the pain and replacing it with the solidity of strength.

The mark shines bright, burning away the darkness around her heart, and he shimmers into being, standing next to Kakashi.

She turns her eyes to him, silver-hazel once again in her still-ashen face.

"About time, Huyga," she breathes with the barest hint of a grateful laugh.

Neji's proud look is solely for her, and so perfect a match for how she loves to remember him best, that her heart beats twice as fast, and her light gleams twice as bright.

A cloud passes over her features, and she gasps in pain.

"A valiant effort, but you will not stop me, Kunoichi," Danzo's voice ripples between them. "I will destroy you before either of them can save you, and claim your soul as mine."

His figure looms through and around her, surrounding her in midnight. He concentrates all of his power into shadowy hands that manifest around her heart and begin to crush it - trying to overpower the light.

A cry is ripped from her lips, and her eyes are swallowed in black once again, but she does not yield.

Why should she?

She isn't fighting alone.

With uncanny synchronicity, both Kakashi and Neji lunge forward. Their outstretched arms land simultaneously, palm to her heart, overlapping one another.

Kakashi anchors her mortal self.

Neji anchors her soul.

And together, they forcibly expel Danzo from her being, throwing him back into the spirit world in a brilliant expulsion of light.

Tenten's body collapses forward, cradled in Kakashi's arms.

Outside of the mortal realm, Tenten's spirit-self is clutching at the front of Neji's robes, and looks up at him, blinking and wide eyed.

"Neji…."

He crushes her to himself, holding her in death more tightly than he had ever done in life.

"Neji," she sob-sighs, and flings her arms about him.

He crashes his lips down upon hers, then, and she is warm and pliant and real under his touch.

There is a detonation, and a pulse ripples out from the epicenter of their bond.

Danzo's shrieks of denial and anger and despair and defeat rend the air as he is forced out of existence, torn apart by the flood of light that explodes from the hearts of the ever-loyal Kunoichi and her Guardian.

The darkness that permeated the battlefield is shredded into tatters and vaporized by the light.

A triumphant cheer erupts from the ranks.

The battle is won.

Spirits blaze into light and rocket as stars back to a distant sky. One by one, the souls depart until a migration of comets dance and circle and fly away.

Rin, Obito, Kushina, Chiyo, Lord Third, Hiruzen, Jiraiya, Itachi - they all fade, and the world goes to white.

And they are left in their own space between worlds, where they are the only two beings in existence.

And he will die a second death before he lets her slip away from him again.

But as she wraps her body around his, and he is able to respond, flesh to flesh, he knows he won't have to.

He doesn't question what can only be a miracle.

He simply accepts - for once - without question what fate has given him.

And his being is at peace.

* * *

_Guardian updates will be on **Thursday**. After they catch up to Kunoichi, I'll post Kunoichi updates on Saturday. Thank you so much for sticking with this story! Chapter order below!_

I: She Can't  
... i: He knows

II: Two Years  
...ii: Two Years Gone

III: Unexpected Ally  
...iii: Reinforcements

IV: Appointments  
...iv: Light

V: Spar  
... v: Warmth

VI: Phantoms  
...vi: Steadfast

VII: Hope Macabre  
...vii: Battle

VIII: Wake  
...viii: Lost

IX: The Long Way Home  
...xi: Rekindle

X: On the Edge  
...x: Hostage

XI: Rubicon  
...xi Alea iacta est

**...Convergence... (4/11)**

xii. Guardian **(4/14)**  
...XII: Kunoichi

xiii. Chasing Clouds **(4/21)**  
...XIII: Unfinished

xiv. Chrysalis **(4/28)**  
...XIV: What it Isn't

xv. Evolution **(5/5)**  
...XV: Suspicion

xvi. Reciprocity **(5/12)**  
...XVI: Confrontation

xvii. Insurgent **(5/19)**  
...XVII. Efflorescence **(5/21)**

xviii. Renaissance **(5/26)**  
...XVIII. Confidences **(5/28)**

xix. The New Normal **(6/2)**  
...XIX. New Hope **(6/4)**

xx. Shield **(6/9)**  
...XX. Polaris **(6/11)**

...Reunion... **(6/16)**  
...Epilogue.. **(6/18)**


	24. xii: Guardian

_*Housekeeping: I moved 'Convergence' to its proper place in the chapter lineup. Each week, I'll move the previous chapter into its proper place before posting the next one. Once I'm caught up with 'Guardian,' everything will stay put :) This chapter falls after 'Convergence' and before 'Kunoichi.'_

* * *

**Guardian**  
**xii. Guardian**

* * *

There is no time here.

The world of white and nothingness has melted from silken sheets into one of blue skies and sweet grass.

She stirs by his side, and he rolls to face her.

Vaguely he thinks this is one of the hills in Konoha, although he knows in the real world it had never been so comfortable, and he had never made love to her there.

But here, she is gazing up at him, dark hair all atumble around her shoulders.

"Neji," she breathes softly, trailing ever-gentle fingertips along his cheek. He leans his forehead against her own.

He kisses her slowly. Languorously.

And she responds in kind.

She smiles against his mouth before leaning back to look him over.

"You look…. different," she muses, breathy and kiss-swollen.

"They tell me I am aging with you."

"Is it because we are still connected?"

"Yes," he traces the curve of her cheek and of her jaw.

"And where are we," she looks around. "I get the feeling this isn't quite heaven."

"I do not know," he admits. "But …I fear we cannot stay."

"What now?" she asks on a whisper, pressing her cheek to his chest and holding him tightly.

She looks up to him with great sorrowful eyes, but the ache is duller than it has been in the past. His flesh is warm against hers, and she knows that is because it is real.

Whatever this is, it isn't a dream.

He is really here, with her, and he is flesh under her fingers.

"I have to go back…. don't I?"

It is a whispered question, and his fingers still in her hair.

He presses a kiss to her forehead.

"Yes," he says simply.

She buries her face in the crook of his neck, and he feels the tears hot on his skin.

But she cries silently.

"When we leave here," he tips up her face to his own, "time will re-write itself. You will return to the living world. You will resume your discussion with Kakashi. Your life will continue on."

"And what about you?" she tightens her fingers in the silk of his hair.

"I shall be watching over you, and waiting. That will never change."

"But…" she searches for the courage to pry loose the words sticking to the sides of her mouth and tongue. "Kakashi. He is tied to me. What if when I return… what if … what if that means…"

"Wherever your fate leads, so be it," he kisses her temple. "As long as you do not give into the darkness, nothing you do in this life can break us. Nothing changes that I will be waiting for you."

"No matter what?"

Her voice is small, and he senses that perhaps she subconsciously saw some hints of possible futures.

"No matter what," he assures her. "Your soul is bound to mine, and mine to yours. Nothing - no relationship good or bad - nothing can change that."

"And I will forget all of this, won't I," she asks, voice heavy with the weight of the answer she knows is coming.

"Yes," he admits.

"Then," she pulls him over herself, "I won't waste a moment."

And as he loves her, it dawns on him.

She is saying "goodbye."

Or, at the very least, "Farewell."

And he thinks, perhaps, this is the one thing that was really stolen from them in life.

They never had the chance to say goodbye.

There is no time here, and yet it is suddenly it has run out.

"It is just like going on a mission," she murmurs into his throat, before adding with a hint of the girl he remembers, "for the rest of my life."

"Yes," he gives a light chuckle against her temple.

"But when it is all over...I can come back. I can return to you?" She blinks before looking into his eyes, searchingly.

"Always," he promises her.

He gives her a last lingering kiss, and she fades back to her world.

Time resets.

She is once again trapped in the landscape of her mind, weathering the aftereffects of her mission while Kakashi watches over her.

The battle before had been against The Darkness - this battle is against her own demons, and is no less deadly.

But this time, she is not alone.

He is present to her.

He is with her.

He battles by her side, and is her companion against inner demons and long buried memories.

He is there when she makes her first kill as an ANBU.

He is there when she is choking in an illusory burning Konoha, trying to find all of her friends before they are consumed by the flames.

He is there when she isn't fast enough.

He is there the next time the illusion comes and she saves Lee.

He is there when she relives that attack that almost killed her, and ended her ability to have children.

He holds her when she finally allows herself to mourn the loss of children she will never have - something she has never done in life, because she considered that future lost when he died.

And as the poison and toxins and demons subside, and she begins to rise to consciousness, she catches sight of him.

She exhales, battle-weary and soul-worn, but triumphant.

"We did it," she tells him.

"No," he shakes his head. "You did it."

He cups her face gently.

"You are so much stronger than you know," he places a hand on her heart, "in ways you cannot possibly imagine."

"Neji," she breathes, and it dawns on him that in this timeline, it is the first time she has said his name, even if it is to her own heart.

He holds her tightly and kisses her deeply, and they melt and meld while the demons sublimate.

All memories of him and their time together recede into the sinew of her being, and she groggily drifts to consciousness.

She is sitting contemplatively on Kakashi's couch as he presses a cup of tea into her hand.

Her body is still - exhausted from her battles on the field and in her mind.

But her soul is far more still than it has been in years.

Four of them, to be precise.

Her mental scars are raw and angry and gaping and red, but the monsters that constantly clawed them fresh have been beaten into sulky submission.

She is still broken, he knows this.

But she can mend.

It, as with all things, will take time.

She confides in Kakashi - he has seen the tattoo above her heart, and knows what it symbolizes for her.

The light that had spread from Tenten to Kakashi before is still present - the last lingering, unrevised sliver of time.

Neji looks to his own hand.

He can still feel the thrum of the green ink under his palm, and he wonders what it all means.

He watches as Kakashi and Tenten rewrite their history and their futures - but not in any of the shades painted by Danzo.

This is a new beginning.

She still has so much to do.

But it is a start.

And it is a start toward the light.

And he is, as always, by her side.

Because she is his heart.

And it is finally alive again.

* * *

_Next chapter: Chasing Clouds (4/21)_

_I hope this gives a better context for XII. Kunoichi, which is/has been an understandably controversial chapter for some readers. The next chapter of 'Guardian' is one of my favorite, and I am excited to share it with you. See you next Thursday!_

_With sincere thanks,  
\- Giada_


	25. XII: Kunoichi

_A/N: Dear Santa. I'd love to own Naruto. - GL_

_I was going to wait to update, but heck, why not. _

_*Dear readers. If you are thrown by this chapter, I ask you to remember there is a companion story titled 'Guardian' from Neji (as a ghost's) point of view, and it will explain more. I humbly request you trust me as an author and ride this story out with me. If I lose you after this chapter, I am sorry - maybe next time?_

_That being said: lemons ahead._

* * *

**Kunoichi  
XII. Kunoichi**

* * *

The green of the tattoo is ominous against her firelit skin.

Although it is what he expected to see, he still feels the weight in his chest when she confirms his suspicions.

He knows they all have their ghosts and burdens and secrets.

He even knows she can handle her own.

That doesn't stop him from recognizing that she is a threat to herself.

When she says nothing more, he raises his eyebrows to her.

"Care to explain?"

She holds his steady gaze and there is no sound or movement for a full minute, save for the flicker and crackle of the fire.

Finally, she puts down her tea and rises slowly. He watches her cross to the fireplace, resting her hand on the mantle to steady herself and gather her thoughts and words.

"I am a Kunoichi of Konoha," she says slowly, her eyes on the flames. "I am an inheritor of the Will of Fire, and a survivor of the Fourth Shinobi War. I am not afraid to die."

"No," his voice is clear from his seat behind her. "But why are you afraid to live?"

Her world stills to nothing.

"You are prepared to die for your village," he continues. "Why are you not also prepared to live for it?"

She shakes her head. "Every day I am alive, I live for my village."

"Do you?"

Her look is sharp but he is unphased. "I do not question your loyalty to Konoha. I do question the stability of a shinobi who is actively seeking their death."

"I will not die without cause," she says with steely conviction.

He raises his eyebrows at her.

"And what is your cause, Tenten?"

Silent war is waged in the airspace between them.

The air pressure shifts, and she feels him yield – if only a little bit – to allow her to speak.

"What is driving you?" he asks in a softer tone. "Help me to understand."

She isn't sure if it is the unmistakable note of honesty and respect for a fellow soldier in his voice, or the residual effects of the poison, or the antidote, or the alcohol, but suddenly she can't hide what she is – what she has become anymore.

She has to step out of the shadows.

She crosses the small space and stands directly in front of him.

Without breaking eye contact, she calmly unties the belt of the robe, and lets it slide off of her shoulders before she tosses it to the couch.

She performs the necessary hand seals, and releases the concealment jutsu.

Kakashi's eyes grow wide.

She is a battle-hardened kunoichi of Konoha.

Her physical training is second to none – Gai saw to that.

She is hard lines and defined muscles and marred skin and soft silk.

As much as he appreciates this, it is not what rivets his indivertible gaze to her.

It is the elaborate black tattoos that run the length of both arms, splay across parts of her back and vine down her legs.

Kakashi's eyes widen at the delicate intricacy of it all even as he recognizes he inscribing hand with foreboding.

His eyes trace their pattern even to the small space between the hem of her shirt and her underwear.

Following his gaze, and in the interest of full disclosure, she yanks the tank top over her head and lets it fall unceremoniously to the ground, just as she did when Sasuke demanded to see the results of her visit.

Except there is nothing else under her tank top.

The tattooing winds around her bared abdomen and under her full breasts. The green of the caged bird seal is prominent on the pale skin above her heart in stark contrast to scarred flesh and winding onyx.

She holds her arms out to him for inspection, wrists up.

He leans forward in his chair and gingerly runs his index finger along a line of chakra infused ink embedded in her skin, interpreting the complex seals and designs.

"Summoning tattoos?" he asks quietly, tracing the marks on her arm.

"Weapons summoning," she affirms.

Kakashi finds he has nothing to say.

Orochimaru has his summoning tattooed on his arm. Sasuke has a weapons tattoo on his wrist.

This is an entirely different level – more extreme than anything he has ever seen.

As he looks up, he is surprised to see someone staring back for a change – an echo of the person he once remembered living behind those large, hazel eyes. To see her now in this so markedly altered body, so scared by wounds, pain, ink, and time – he can only ask one question.

"Why?"

Her smile is small and sad.

"Because I am a Kunoichi of Konoha."

"…?"

"Each day I am alive it is _for_ my village," she said, eyes scanning his. "For my comrades. So that Sai can finally be 'Sai' and live to see his children and the life Danzo tried to steal from him. So that Sasuke can atone and return to Sakura who has worked her whole life to be the kind of person and kunoichi I could no. So Shino and Kiba can continue to bicker, and the Ino-Shika-Cho trio reaches the next generation, and that legendary alliance and its bond keeps the village strong. So Lee and Gai can live to be youthful into old age. So that Hinata can live to change the Hyūga clan, and makes sure this," she taps her fingers over her heart "is the last Caged Bird seal ever imprinted on any living soul." Her expression softens. "So Naruto can finally become Hokage, and keep the hate out of Konoha."

She pauses and there is steel under velvet in her tone.

"I put myself on the line so that they don't have to. I have nothing left to lose; they have _everything_ to lose."

Something passes between them and she can see the depth of his new and sudden understanding.

But there is another ghost in her gaze, and something inside him lurches to see Rin in her eyes and hear her echoes in this abject determination and conviction.

The night she was killed is always sharp in his memory. He can still see his her racing alongside him, trying to tell him that _something_ was wrong. He can hear her trying to reason out what had been done to her even as they fled from their pursuers. He did not know that in those moments, she was weighing her own life against the survival of village.

Against his own life.

To Rin, there would only ever be one answer to that question.

He sees that same resolve in Tenten's eyes.

That is when he knows with bone-deep certainty that for these two kunoichi, it was never a question in the first place.

Eyes heavy with the regret of being unable to prevent the eventuality of her sacrifice drift to the stark symbol so representative of all of the ugly of the shinobi world.

It is the only color inked into her skin.

The rest of the winding symbols are ink-black, and a combination of lines and shapes and inscriptions and seals and a hundred other things that he knows only one person could have put there.

"Orochimaru."

"Yes."

"What else could he possibly have taken from you in exchange?"

"Nothing," she meets his gaze steadily. "My life is already not my own."

"He always demands something in return," he says darkly.

"Then perhaps," her expression is wistful, "it is not what he took from me but what he denies me." She flicks her wrist and a fistful of shuriken appear between her fingers. "I am much harder to kill, now." Another flick of the wrist, and they are gone.

"At what price, Tenten," he asks her quietly. "And to what end?"

There is a heavy silence between them as they lock eyes not as once-teacher to her generation, or even as Hokage to ANBU elite, but as souls leveled and equalized by death in their lives.

When she speaks, it is with a gravitas far beyond the journey of twenty-some summers.

"I already paid my price."

He listens. Her voice is low but steady.

He does not expect the frank confession.

"My heart died on the battlefield, Kakashi. This body," she glances down at herself, "is all I have left to defend my village. Pain is nothing. Time is nothing."

Her eyes search his face.

"When death comes, I will welcome it. Until then, I endure to protect everything he sacrificed his life for until I can die as a shinobi and be with him again."

And with that single admission, she is more vulnerable now than she has been with another human being since she woke up all tangled limbs and naked skin and shared breath in the strong arms of the beautiful, brave man that became her other half.

Kakashi drops his gaze to his hands, folded in his lap as he sits hunched in the chair, shoulders bowed with the weight of burdens owned and shared.

What can he possibly tell her?

He sees her fingers reach for his own and follows them as she gently takes his hand and rests his palm on the damning mark engraved upon her as it once had been on the forehead of one of the bravest heroes and greatest losses of the Fourth Shinobi War.

When she speaks, it is as one familiar with the weights on his heart.

"We both know something about sacrifice and masking pain… don't we, Hokage-sama?"

And without knowing many of the particulars, he suddenly knows everything.

His finds his palm lifts and his fingers ghost over the sharp unyielding lines of green, hints of a heartbeat detectable under his fingertips, for all her claims that it had stopped on the battlefield.

Her hand raises to his face and tentative fingers trace his cheek through the mask, a butterfly-gentle touch begging forgiveness over permission.

Reciprocity.

He is aware of the minute and charged distance between his palm and the firm and full breast resting under the space below his arched and inspecting fingers.

With infinite tenderness and respect to the irrefutable evidence of her many sacrifices, he traces the thin blue veins that dart between the arcs of black lines, across to her sternum and down the valley between her breasts to follow the black markings and lay the flat of his hand on the curve of her hip. His thumb traces an arc over the intricacies etched into her skin by weapons, time, and ink.

He leans into the palm at his cheek, and watches her closely as he hooks the finger of his free hand into his mask and pulls it down around his neck.

And now he is naked to her, too, for all his clothing.

Strong fingers trace the planes of his cheek in understanding – in the ache of sorrow shared, and dreams forsaken if not forgotten.

The years between them are suddenly inconsequential.

They are two bleeding, broken beings, two ephemeral souls tied to this life for the sake of others, and ready to retire their morality without hesitation, should it protect those precious to them. She lowers her mouth to his as he raises his to hers.

Their world and the order inside of it fractures beautifully and irrevocably.

Lips brushing in question are soon crushed and pressed together heatedly.

She has only had one lover, and she had been his. Everything they knew they had learned from each other.

He never speaks of past loves, but he is no stranger to what is to come.

There is a hunger now in the touches and she nips at his bottom lip. He groans and hauls her to him, standing and scooping her up in one motion before flash stepping them both to his room. They tumble onto the bed and his mouth is on hers and then pressing heated kisses down her neck and to her breast. She arches against the starburst of sensation radiating in swirls traced by his tongue around the sensitive apex. Echoes of the intense pleasure reverberate in the nerve endings of her core, and he presses against her rising hips with a moan.

He can feel threads of chakra along the tattooed markings, even as he cups and suckles one full breast while running a hand down her side. She shoves the vest off of his shoulders and pulls the shirt over his head. He leans over her so she can work his pants over his hips, while he rubs the pad of his thumb over the utilitarian cotton of her underwear before slipping it beneath to stroke her slick heat. He hears her breath catch on a hiss and he only has a moment to smirk before she yanks him down to her and kisses him fiercely. He feels her fingers close on the length of him and he instinctively knows that this particular hunger is something neither of them suspected lurked in their beings or that they were even still capable of feeling.

He groans as her thumb traces over the tip and then traces the path down and up again in an excruciatingly deliberate motion. She gasps at the feel of strong fingers plunging into her warmth, and the calculated and coordinated rotation of his thumb that threatens to shake her painstakingly maintained self-control to nothing.

She isn't certain quite when or how he removed what little remained of her clothing, but later inspection will reveal the use of a very sharp object.

He pulls her hips toward him, his body moving without conscious intervention.

A moment of clarity – of caution – and he pauses to take in her naked and sprawling beauty.

It was a sight he had never anticipated, and while he sure as hell appreciates it, he hesitates.

"Are you-" is as far as he gets. He meets her eyes in understanding and kisses the palm pressed to his lips.

Instead of replying, she pulls herself to sitting, hair tumbling from the quickly crafted bun, legs wrapping around his middle and arms around his neck. He wraps his arms around her back and for a moment they simply stay suspended in time. Through some mutually intelligible and no doubt infinitesimal signal, he lifts her by her hips and buries himself with in her.

The sensation of her enveloping warmth – her full breasts rubbing against his chest, her long hair sweeping over the hands that cup her bottom and pull her onto him again and again – it takes his breath away. He pitches them forward and once her back is on the mattress, the tone changes. Insistent. Driving. Primal. Devouring. She writhes beneath him, and he doesn't stop until he feels her arch against him and convulse around him. His release comes with hers, and light explodes behind his eyelids and something unclenches in his chest.

They collapse in a tangle of sheets and sweat and naked limbs. There is no more room for regret in either of their lives, and somehow they both know that is not where this will end.

Stranger still, they also both know that this – whatever it is fated to become - it isn't over.

He holds her to himself, wondering how something that should be weighing on him found him feeling lighter.

She looks up at him and he wonders if there are right words to say – because if there are, he certainly doesn't know them.

Instead, she speaks for the first time since they kissed, and it is exactly the right thing to say.

"Sleep."

He drops a kiss to her temple, and then her shoulder, and they both surrender to the unknown without question, in the comfort of the other's embrace, and the kindness of a deep and dreamless sleep.

* * *

_Next Chapter: Unfinished_


	26. xiii: Chasing Clouds

**This chapter comes in between **XII. Kunoichi** and **XIII. Unfinished. *****

* * *

**Guardian**  
**xiii. Chasing clouds**

* * *

"What do you think it is like?"

It is a question she asks while lying on her back, arms behind her head, watching the clouds roll across the sky.

He is still recovering from his mission to help retrieve Sasuke - a mission that failed utterly and completely - and she splits her time between checking in on him and Lee.

Today, Gai and Lee are training, so he and Tenten have been left to their own devices. They settle for a much more sedate session of meditation and occasionally looking out over their mentor and teammate.

His world has been turned upside-down by his unthinkable defeat at Naruto's hands and his Uncle's confession.

Because he is grateful for her steady, calming presence in his life, he humors her occasional flights of fancy.

"What is what like?" he asks, eyes closed as he sits ramrod straight in meditation, his back flush against the tree.

"To achieve a dream," she says, holding a hand to the sky and watching the sun between outstretched fingers.

"I wouldn't know," he scoffs, but the bitterness isn't as thick as it used to be. He'd spent his life until now convinced he was shackled by fate. Since everything, then, was already decided for him, he didn't truly have a future; not in the truest sense of the word.

But Naruto has changed that.

And for the first time, he is considering a life as a result of choices.

"I think it's like catching a cloud."

"Your ambitions are dictated by the whims of weather and water vapor, then?" he asks baldly, because it is easier than asking 'what do you mean?'

"Always so literal," she sighs, "but maybe not so far from the truth. Clouds are always changing. Even if you can predict the things causing them, and weather patterns, and everything else, - the shapes they make are all their own. Unpredictable. And everyone sees something different."

She rolls onto her side, plucking at the green grass. "I always wanted to be a great kunoichi - still do. But my dreams used to take the shape of becoming just like Lady Tsunade." She laughs a little at herself. "Apparently Sakura fits better into my dream than I did," she admits wryly.

"You were abysmally bad at medical ninjutsu," Neji allows tonelessly, but she knows he is not being unkind.

"Good thing I'm good at first-aid," she snorts. "Or you'd have more things to explain to your Uncle after our spars."

He cracks one eye open and looks over to her.

"Clouds?" he prompts.

"Clouds," she returns to her original train of thought. "I still have the same dream, but the clouds keep shifting. I don't quite know what shape they will take, but I keep chasing them." She sighs at herself. "Foolish, isn't it?"

"Not entirely," he closes his eyes again, feeling her energy rather than watching her. "A good shinobi is adaptable, and knows both their strengths and their weaknesses. To pursue a course of action that does not play well to either of these, much less both of them, is reckless and imprudent."

"Well far be it from me to be reckless and imprudent," she hums and lies back again to stare up at the clouds.

"Dreams change," he says, his voice low and sedate.

"What about fate?" she asks, and he knows she is being careful.

"Perhaps," he opens his eyes to blink into the dappled sunlight, "it is not as set as I had thought."

"Good," she smiles at the sky before turning to give him an appreciative smile. "I'm glad."

They both look at the sky, then, and follow the pair of birds that soar into the sun.

He looks at the clouds with new eyes, and wonders about his future.

He doesn't know what is coming, but he knows who he wants to be there.

Who he wants to share it with.

Who he wants by his side.

And for the first time, he allows himself to consider a future, and to dream his own dreams.

It is half a year before he realizes his loyalty to her is something different than his loyalty to anyone else.

It is a full year before he says anything.

And when he does, it is in that same spot, in the same position, as Gai and Lee are halfway across the village, racing on their hands.

"Together," he says.

"Hm?" she rolls her head lazily to the side to consider him, eyes heavy with the malaise of a warm sun induced half-sleep.

"The clouds," he gestures with his head, but does not take his eyes from her own. "We...we should chase them. Together."

She holds his gaze for a long time, and he hopes it is the sun warm on his cheeks, and not anything as undignified as a blush.

He finally arches an impatient eyebrow at her, trying to ignore the heavy pulse in his ears.

Her smile is slow, but kind, and her eyes are warm with a depth of understanding belonging to the woman she is on the edge of becoming, not the young girl he has known so long and so well.

"Yes," she says gently. "Together."

And now, the face of her dreams is about to change again.

He reminds her of this as he brushes a gentle kiss across her brow, and she smiles even in sleep.

She has survived a grievous ordeal, and while she has no memory of it, she will need time to heal.

And he will stand by her, no matter what.

They are still together.

And unlike the clouds she has to chase,

\- that will never change.

* * *

_Your feedback is so appreciated, friends - especially considering the insanity of life the last few weeks. (everything is fine, just very, very busy in that crazybeautifulwtf sort of way life can be) Thank you for sticking with me!  
with a little heart full of gratitude  
\- Giada_


	27. XIII: Unfinished

_A/N: I keep hoping I'll wake up and find out that I indeed own Naruto. So far, no dice._

_Minor citrus. _

* * *

**Kunoichi  
XIII. Unfinished**

* * *

He knows when she leaves the bed.

She seals everything back in her scrolls and dresses in uniform and then she is gone.

He showers and dresses and goes directly to the memorial.

She is just leaving.

Despite the fact that they shared a night of intimacy – several times over – there is nothing in either of their faces.

She bows her greeting. "Hokage-sama."

"Captain," he nods.

They pass as ships in the night.

But his being is lighter.

And there is still someone behind her eyes.

Her mission lasts for two weeks.

She checks in first with the medics. Sakura sees her right away, and gives her the all clear.

Tenten prepares to leave as Sakura signs off on her papers.

"Here," she says gruffly, handing her a scroll. "A midwife told me that this will help."

Sakura unrolls the scroll and sees several very rare herbs and ingredients sealed into the scroll and a recipe for several teas.

"These look like the Hyūga recipes," she murmurs as she skims the contents.

"Probably," she shrugs. "She told me that they learned it from a ghost-eyed midwife a long time ago. She came to that region to harvest the rare herbs and a certain kind of tree bark."

Sakura nods. "Hinata has been researching this for me," she says. "She said that a couple of the ingredients were hard to come by – this is a huge help."

"Just a twist of luck," Tenten shrugs. "No need to mention where it came from."

Sakura mutely hands her the release form. The words are so soft, she isn't sure she hears them.

"How is she?"

Sakura looks up at the dark-haired woman, who is busying herself putting her report and clearance papers in the pouch at her waist.

"Better," Sakura allows. "Her body will heal in a few months; everything else takes time. But," she smiles gently, "she has us – all of us – looking out for her." Sakura studies Tenten carefully. "I think we can get through anything if we stick together."

Tenten flicks a look up at her, and they lock eyes.

"It is good to have comrades we can trust," Sakura adds calmly.

Tenten gives a small nod. "Hai."

Sakura watches her slide her ANBU mask back on, but sees a glimpse of her old friend behind the eyes so long empty. In a moment she is gone, and Sakura looks to the scroll in her hand. "We are looking out for you, too," she adds softly. "As much as you will let us."

When she returns to drop off her mission report and her medical release in the Hokage's office, Sai is waiting there for her. He thanks her for both him and Ino. She doesn't mention what she just gave Sakura, she just gives him a curt nod. Of all people, Sai understands emotional disconnect. She leaves directly.

He continues his conversation with Kakashi addressing his concerns for the weapons mistress that is being called the Konoha Dragon in some circles. Before he leaves, he tells the Hokage that he wishes to be among the first called if she needs anything from a mission partner to backup.

Kakashi assures Sai he shall keep that in mind.

Sakura stops by later that afternoon and tells him what Tenten was up to.

"She did that for Ino," he muses.

"I'm worried about her, Sensei," she says, biting her lower lip. "She has logged more mission hours than almost any other ANBU in the last two years. She is gone from Konoha for long stretches of time, and usually on solo missions. Of the ANBU I see, she has been in Konoha the least."

Those familiar jade eyes scour Kakashi's and he can see the kind, caring girl in the face of the highly competent and respected woman she is. "I am worried that she doesn't know she has anyone – that she has us."

She looks down at her hands. "I think she doesn't think she has anyone. That she lost everything when Neji died." She flicks a look up at Kakashi and half smiles at herself. "I know that might sound hypocritical coming from me; we both know how I took Sasuke's time away. But I could at least hope that he'd come back, and he has. But for her…" she trailed off, palms up in a helpless gesture. "What does she have?"

Kakashi watched her keep sympathetic tears at bay. "I…I just don't want her to think she is alone," she finally sighed.

"None of us do," he finally spoke up.

"Will…will you speak with her?" Sakura asked hopefully. "She might listen to you."

"I will do what I can," he allowed.

She takes her leave of the Hokage and returns to her work.

There is nothing in their earlier interactions to warn him, but he is not surprised to find her in his home, staring into the fire.

He crosses to her and holds out a hand. She looks up at him and raises both eyebrows, but doesn't move. He pulls the mask down and she trails eyes over him with a wistful smile.

They share a meal and minimal conversation, and comfortable silences.

When they are done and the dishes are put away, they sit in front of the fire.

It might be an eternity or it might be no time at all before their fingers wind together, and she leans back against his chest.

She glances over her shoulder and he drops a kiss to her temple.

Neither knows who initiated it, but the dawn finds the fire low, and their bodies entwined in his bed.

That night, he notices.

He is trailing a finger down her neck and to her heart when he sees the embellishments.

There is more to the green tattoo than before. He touches it tentatively and raises his eyebrows to her.

"It isn't finished," she says simply.

He shrugs and holds her while they sleep.

Meanwhile, Sakura finishes her late shift at the hospital, and enters her home with a curious weight about her.

When she sees him waiting for her, though – back early from a mission, she is suddenly awash in gratitude and relief, and a hundred other things. She drops her belongings and rushes to him, flinging her arms around his neck.

He is surprised at this particular greeting from his wife – he hasn't been gone very long at all this time. He feels the damp of tears at his neck, and alarm spikes through him.

He holds her tightly, and murmurs into her hair. "Sakura…? Sakura, what's wrong."

"Nothing," she gasps against his throat before looking up at him with eyes wide and glistening with the sheen of tears. "Absolutely nothing."

Puzzled, Sasuke begins to ask for an explanation, but is halted by the fierce kiss and strong arms that wrap around him. When she buries her head on his shoulder, her face in the crook of his neck, he asks her again.

"What is wrong?"

She pulls back and looks up at him with eyes full of something hauntingly familiar. She traces gentle fingers across his cheek to cup his face.

"Never leave," she whispers, the tears still lingering in her voice. "Never again, I can't-"

She forgets, sometimes, how fast he is.

Before she can blink, he has captured her lips into a kiss absolutely meant to banish the words from her mouth – possibly from her vocabulary altogether. "Baka," his voice is low and rumbles against her. "I told you before. I'll always come back to you."

"I know," she rests her head on his chest. "I just…" she sighed. "I just can't lose you again."

"Hn," he scoffs. "I told you. You won't."

She smiles wryly at his gruff assurance.

She looks up, something finally registering.

"…When did we get to the bedroom?"

He shrugs one shoulder, almost bored. "About half a second after you started being annoying."

She narrows her eyes at him. "Annoying," she repeats flatly.

"Yes," he sighs, but reaches out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "Annoying. You clearly weren't listening."

She watches him warily. "When?"

"When I told you that no matter how often I am called away, I shall return. I am home for good." His smile is slow and wickedly predatory. "Looks like you need more convincing."

The warmth blooming in her chest shoots straight south. "Looks like," she agrees.

"Hn."

Even if she has another objection, she doesn't time to voice it. Sasuke is too busy stating his case.

He is very persuasive.

Multiple times.

He is also very thorough.

Uchiha Sakura wakes in the warmth of his arms the next morning and kisses him gently.

She thinks that perhaps this time, she will assure him that she isn't going anywhere, either.

When Sasuke finds himself pinned under her, he looks up and arches a challenging brow at her mischievous and triumphant smirk. His mind automatically races with strategies and counter measures, until she straddles his hips and envelops him in her slick heat. As always, she overrides his every cognitive process, and he finds he has only one simple and coherent thought.

"_It is good to be home._"

* * *

_Thanks for reading friends. I'd love to hear from you, if you have a moment to spare. Happy New Year!_

_-GL_


	28. xiv: Chrysalis

_Two more installments of 'Guardian' before we are caught up and move on to Thursday and Saturday updates. Just a small chapter this week; probably the shortest update remaining. I am so excited to have this story back on track, and grateful for the return readers!_

**falls between

**XIII. Unfinished**_ and _**XIV. What it Isn't**_._

* * *

**Guardian**  
**xiv. Chrysalis**

* * *

She is changing.

He can see the edges of her self become less brittle, and the pain surrounding her heart, less raw.

It is a slow, gradual metamorphosis, but for the first time since he was taken from her side in the heat of battle, he has not feared for her soul.

There has been no trace of Danzo.

Lord Third says he has been erased from existence - both consumed and destroyed by the darkness.

"And what of the darkness?" he asks. "Will it return for her?"

The former Hokage considers this.

"The darkness will always be a potential enemy to her," he reasons. "It has tasted her pain, and will follow. But as for being in immediate danger… no. I think not. She is no longer the lynchpin in the overambitious schemes of a delusional soul. Provided that she keeps her light - and her life, she should be safe."

Neji gives a small, satisfied nod.

She is a small being warmed by a gentle sun.

Her heart is starting to bloom.

Her pilgrimages to Orochimaru continue, as do her missions.

The Sanin jots down his findings, and asks questions, and performs tests.

His snakes still follow her now and then, but she pays them no mind.

Her light is steady, and grows stronger, even as the verdant lines of her tattoo begin to spread across her skin.

Neji has a theory about what he is seeing, but he stays silent and watches, content she is in no danger.

Jiraiya is there today.

"She is holding up well," he declares, rubbing his chin. "I'd never known Danzo to have good taste in women, but he had a knack for picking good soldiers. I see why he chose her."

Neji wasn't sure how to respond to that remark, but Jiraiya wasn't finished.

"I, on the other hand, have excellent taste in women, and I can definitely see why _you_ chose her. And it had nothing to do with that," he waves a hand, and spark of chakra dances along their bond.

Tenten rubs the back of her neck, and Jiraiya smiles.

"Responding better, too," he says with satisfaction. "In that case, the woman who has your heart is already doing the one thing the one holding mine didn't."

"And what is that?" he asks before he can stop himself.

"She listens," Jiraiya says, wistfully. "In that respect, she has surpassed her idol."

Neji is perversely pleased to hear this, and reminds himself to mention it to Tenten when she is finally back by his side.

For now, though, he is content to wait.

* * *

Next Update on 05/05 - **xv. Evolution  
**_So grateful to you, friends! - GL_**  
**


	29. XIV: What it Isn't

_A/N: Kishimoto brought Naruto to the party. I'm more of a 'show up with an appetizer or dessert' kind of person._

* * *

**Kunoichi  
XIV. What it Isn't**

* * *

It is a perfectly ordinary spring day the first time Might Gai does the math.

Several days prior, Tenten came to tell him she will be gone for most of the month, but that she would stop back in Konoha for two days as she traveled back from Suna to head northeast to Kumo. She promised to visit then.

He is holding the message she sent to let him know she made it to Suna safely.

It is then that he realizes that in the three-and-a-half years since the end of the war, she has not spent more than three weeks in Konoha at a time. The first year she was in ANBU, he had seen her only a handful of times, and she had spent at least six consecutive months away from the village.

He frowns.

The political climate has cooled considerably; there is no reason for her to be gone so often and for so long.

He has heard about several of her more dangerous missions – or perhaps, more accurately - he has heard about her time at the hospital. By the time he hears, though, she has been released for several days, and is normally in a completely different village and not slated to return for weeks.

Spring segues into summer as Gai watches her with increasing worry.

He finally goes to the council.

He makes a plea to the Hokage, Tsunade, Hiashi, Shibi, Chōza, Kurenai, Shikamaru, and a few of the others that help in the running of the village.

"I am asking as a Jōnin instructor, a concerned fellow shinobi of Konoha, and as your comrade," he says, his normal exuberant demeanor tempered by the seriousness of this request. "We've lost so many to the war. Don't let her be a casualty."

"She requests these missions, Gai," Tsunade says in a firm but not unsympathetic voice.

"And it makes sense to grant her requests," Shibi intones. "Why you may ask? It is because in the wake of Konoha's after-war prosperity, many of our citizens have gotten married and started families. As it is, there are few that can take the jobs she takes, and even fewer who are willing. She herself says she has no family."

"Perhaps not blood related," Gai interjects hotly, "but she is family to Lee and I! The Rookie Nine look out for her as well," he met their eyes. "Your children," He looked to Hiashi, Chōza, and Shibi. "Your students," He said to Kurenai. "Your comrades," he finished, gazing at Shikamaru. "They are her family."

"We know," Kurenai says gently. "She often volunteers to go in the place of her comrades."

"Demands is more like it," Shikamaru snorts. "It's troublesome, but it can't be helped. As an ANBU Captain, she can check the assignments daily. If it appears one of our friends are being considered for anything she feels is too dangerous or requires an extended leave from the village, she takes it."

"Surely there is something available in Konoha, if only for a couple of months," he urges. "She is the leading weapons specialist in the Land of Fire – perhaps something at the academy? Or working with Genma on bodyguard and protection details?"

Hiashi wants to help. He doesn't know precisely what her relationship was to his nephew, but he knows his death affected her greatly, and his daughter worries for her.

"We have tried," he offers. "Genma and I intended to make her one of the liaisons to my clan, but she declined."

"Bodyguard to the Hokage then," Gai's exasperation is almost comical. "Kakashi has several good will missions in the near future, ne? Let her switch over now, in preparation for those missions."

Chōza gives a good humored snort of laughter. "In this time of peace the Hokage hardly needs more protection – and Kakashi even less than that."

"Peace or not, protocol does dictate the Hokage should travel with bodyguards, and it would make sense to let those assigned become accustomed to the assignment." Tsunade allows. "It would be reasonable to have an ANBU captain head up the security. It might not be a bad idea to assign her in this capacity and assess if she is a good fit for the assignment." Kakashi hears the implied 'and for us to make sure she is stable enough.' "Do you have an opinion on this, Kakashi?"

He does, in fact, have an opinion.

Personal developments aside, she would be perfect for the job and it is a way to keep her closer to the village for her own safety and Gai's peace of mind.

However.

He isn't stupid enough to be the one to suggest much less pass that measure.

He will take responsibility for all of his decisions as Hokage, but he absolutely will not be the one that decides to keep Tenten in Konoha via assignment to his personal guard.

"He doesn't have his Sharingan anymore," Gai blurts out, earning a raised eyebrow from Tsunade. "He… he could use the extra guard."

Tsunade taps a bright red nail on the table. "I suppose it could be justified."

"I believe I should recuse myself from this vote," Kakashi says, spreading his hands.

The others nod, and Tsunade mutters 'coward' just loud enough for him to hear.

He knows she is teasing. He also knows that despite all appearances, she is just as concerned as Gai, and has discussed this with him several times, ex-Hokage to Hokage.

The council votes unanimously, much to Gai's delight. Tenten is brought in and informed of her assignment. She bows and accepts her duties to Konoha, with the understanding that at least once a month she has to report outside of Konoha for an ongoing ANBU assignment. It is noted, and she is told this mission will begin in one week. She bows again and leaves immediately for a five day mission.

He doesn't see her before she goes, but he does find her note on his pillow.

_'I understand.'_

When she returns, she makes a point to visit her old sensei, who is thrilled that she will be in Konoha more regularly.

She doesn't return his enthusiastic grin, but she allows him the comfort he seems to glean from the situation.

She spends an hour at the memorial under clear sky, keeping silent as the stars hover brightly.

She doesn't expect him, but when he is suddenly by her side at the memorial, she makes no move to leave.

In the silence, she feels his strong fingers weave into her own, and she is grateful for the anchor. She knows why he is here; he is making sure she isn't alone.

She knows what this isn't.

It isn't love.

Not quite.

It is loyalty, and it is honesty and it is reciprocity without expectation.

But it isn't love.

Her heart is too far gone, and his life too practical.

But when he holds his hand out to her or she holds her hand out to him – he can't remember which – and they return to his bed, or sit in front of the fire, or just stay in each other's company, everything they are or aren't or this is or isn't doesn't matter.

They just 'are.'

And that is enough.

The days slide into one another.

He watches as slowly the person behind the glassy eyes comes into focus, and she watches as the weight begins to lift from his shoulders. Neither can be accused of being happy per se, but they are both lighter.

There are many things this isn't.

And it isn't love.

But there is something there.

It is quiet, but it is present.

It lingers in the space between heartbeats and flits just on the periphery of her conscious self.

It is there in the gradual easing of the weights in his chest.

It is there when she runs into Ino, and sees that she is laughing again.

It is there when Naruto barges into his office to tell him that Sasuke has made real progress and that far fewer people tried to kill him on sight during their last mission.

It is there when Sakura clears her for her next mission, and is their conversation is minimal but comfortable.

It is there when he sees Kurenai and Mirai leaving the memorial, and the little girl turns to wave bye-bye to her father.

It is there the first time she smiles to herself at Gai and Lee's antics in what has probably been years.

(It is there when she leaves, and Gai weeps for joy at a small but tremendous victory.)

It is there when she, Kakashi, Shikamaru, Genma, Yamato, and Tsunade pour over maps, scrolls, intelligence reports, treaties, and other documents as they discuss the upcoming diplomatic missions in Konoha and abroad, and begin to iron out the logistics.

It is there when Kakashi watches her during the meeting and realizes that she is actively discussing what their roles will be a year from now during the Kage Summit.

It is there when she realizes she hasn't planned anything so far ahead, never looking beyond the end of her missions.

It is there when the two of them sit in his office long after everyone is gone, and they are still discussing the journey to Suna, and the short trip she, Shikamaru, and Yamato shall take ahead of time to familiarize themselves with the area.

(It is there when they only half jokingly decide this has to be kept a secret from Naruto, or he will no doubt demand to tag along.)

It is there, but she can't quite place what it is– like seeing an oh-so-familiar face and being unable to dredge up the name from memory.

The realization comes late one night when his arms are wound about her and her breathing is stilling against the crook of his neck.

The gradual easing of the weight about them both.

The strange almost aching sensation in her chest.

The light she sees flickering in her own eyes, and reflected in his.

She knows what it is.

It isn't Love.

It is Hope.

And it is filling her heart.

* * *

_A/N: Next Chapter - Suspicion_


	30. xv: Evolution

_One more installment of 'Guardian' before we are caught up and move on to Thursday and Saturday updates, friends!_

**falls between

**XIV. What it Isn't**_. and _**XV. Suspicion**

* * *

**Guardian**  
**xv. Evolution**

* * *

She travels to the Land of Iron as part of the entourage from Konoha, and specifically as a guard for Kakashi.

Shikamaru travels with them, and appears to be in an unusual hurry to arrive. Once she learns that Temari will also be there, she hides her smile behind her porcelain mask.

There is not always a call for the Hokage's guards to be masked, but she feels more comfortable this way.

In the fortress of the Samurai, she leaves her mask on, and remains silent.

General Mifune remembers her from the war, and when it is just Kakashi, Shikamaru, and himself, he invites her to sit with them without her mask.

It is only after Kakashi's nod that she complies, removing the mask and setting it on the table, as is polite in these circumstances.

The General is well acquainted with her skills, and asks if her kenjutsu and archery are satisfactory.

Assured that she is more than proficient in both areas, he has a request of her.

"I have some new recruits," he says, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers. "They are unfamiliar with shinobi, and I would like them to have some cross training. A spar or two will be fine. In particular," he looks over to Shikamaru then back to her, "I would like demonstrations by you and another kunoichi."

"Who do you have in mind, General," Kakashi asks politely.

"Suna's representative, Temari," he says, and there is something in his expression that makes her curious.

"With all due respect, General," she says politely, "Our battle styles are not compatible for a spar."

"Any sparring will be done as taijutsu only," he raises a hand to her objections. "The demonstrations are solo efforts. What my younger soldiers lack," he says, and there is mischief in his eyes, "is an understanding of the lands beyond our borders. They do not yet understand the value of a shinobi ally, especially of a kunoichi. I think this exercise will be both informative and enlightening for them."

Both Tenten and Temari interpret this as "they need to have their asses kicked by women," and respond accordingly.

Later, when the recruits are nursing bruises to both body and pride, Temari approaches her.

"Sorry," she says bluntly and without preamble. "About the chunin exams. I went too far."

Tenten can still feel her back cracking against the cold iron of the closed fan, but holds no ire.

"Apology accepted… on one condition."

"And that would be?" her eyebrow quirks.

"What else?" Tenten's lips twist into a rare, predatory smile. "We spar."

Temari's smile mirrors hers.

"Challenge accepted."

Neji watches as she puts one more ghost to bed - the last lingering doubt from all those years ago.

But perhaps, more importantly, she gains a friend.

He smiles, proud of her.

The mission is short, and they return to Konoha to prepare for the journey to Suna.

She seeks out Uchiha to train, and Neji thinks he sees that competitive spark returning.

She will want a rematch with Temari - of that he is certain - but this time it isn't to prove something.

It is because she is a worthy opponent, and Tenten feels she has the right to challenge her.

This, more than anything, tells him something has changed.

And it is a change for the better.

* * *

Next update on 05.12 - **xvi. Reciprocity  
****  
**


	31. XV: Suspicion

_Kishimoto created Naruto. _

_I can do amazing things with glitter._

* * *

**Kunoichi**  
**XV. Suspicion**

* * *

He agrees to meet with her to train.

It is a neutral training ground, far removed from the village proper.

They spar until their bodies are slicked with sweat, their shirts are discarded, and they both agree that at least they aren't in Suna.

She swipes at her face, neck, and chest with a towel, tossing him one from her scrolls.

He notices the tattoo over her heart has become more elaborate.

She tells him the same thing she told Kakashi.

"It isn't finished."

He nods and they agree to meet tomorrow.

He does not go home.

He needs to speak with someone.

It only takes him a few moments to figure out where Naruto is.

He is training with Konohamaru while Hinata is sitting in the shade, watching.

She greets him and he leans against the tree.

"I need you to come to a training session tomorrow," he says, his eyes on the dobe and the chibi-dobe.

Hinata has learned that Sasuke rarely solicits a favor, and it is never in the form of a question.

"Of course," she nods, keeping a careful eye on him. "How can I be of help?"

He mulls his reply. It is something he is sure an Uchiha has never said to a Hyūga.

"I need your eyes."

The next day she eyes the quiet, raven-haired woman and looks back to him with question.

He excuses it to her by explaining they will train with channeling chakra through the tattoos, and various other exercises.

"Hinata will monitor us both from a distance," he says in a bored voice. "If we do the exchange properly, she will be able to see it."

She nods and they begin.

Hinata says little but sees much. She knows why Tenten is hurting and how deeply.

She is only just beginning to understand what that truly means.

She gives Sasuke a minute nod, and he ends the training. Tenten predictably leaves with all due haste, and they are quite alone.

Sasuke raises his eyebrows to her.

"Well?"

Hinata chews thoughtfully on her bottom lip.

"Easier to show you," she offers, and willingly submits to the mild genjutsu.

She shows Sasuke what she saw, and they discuss what they already know.

"It doesn't make sense," he murmurs, "Unless…"

He glances at her, and she holds his look in return.

"I need to do some research. This stays between us?"

"Absolutely," she assures him.

He breaks the genjutsu and they part ways, each to investigate their own suspicions.

They meet several more times before she leaves for her dry run to Suna, and again when she returns.

He has mulled over what he sees in her training, and he is starting to connect the dots.

He and Hinata discuss it only in his genjutsu, and never to anyone else – not even their spouses.

They are both the quiet half of their respective marriages, but their loyalties run no less deep, and their eyes miss next to nothing.

Since his own return to Konoha, he has come to appreciate and respect the wife of his best friend. He harbors no love for her clan, mind you, but that is easily overlooked.

Over the last few months, Tenten has been in the village and assigned to Kakashi. They have been training more, and she has even spoken to Hinata on occasion. The quiet woman does not press her, though, and Sasuke has seen her gradually become less wary, if not less guarded around them both.

Of course, if she even suspected what they were up to, she might not feel the same way.

It started after Hinata watched a training session with Team Seven. She had spoken with him then, and at first he had discounted her theory as impossible.

A week later he downgraded it to 'improbable.'

But as of three days ago, he has determined that might not be the case.

He knows who he needs to speak with, and he knows he can't go alone.

The trouble is, he needs Hinata to come, and Naruto _not_ to come.

In the end, Hinata is the one that gently convinces him to cooperate.

The sun is still a couple of hours from rising.

He looks down at his wife, sleeping snugly in their bed.

She already knows that when she wakes he will be on a mission – it is not uncommon in their life.

He kisses her goodbye in her sleep and seals the house before going to collect his partner for this mission.

Naruto is waiting for him outside of the home he and Hinata share.

His blue eyes are far more serious than normal, and the line of his jaw is unyielding.

"I still don't like this, teme," he says, his voice low.

"Hn."

Naruto knows that is 'Sasuke' for '_I know_,' '_Neither do I_,' '_Too bad_,' and '_I'll look after her_.'

"Watch over her," he says with no trace of his characteristic lightheartedness. "I'll look in on Sakura-chan."

Sasuke nods. One of the reasons he can leave the village so frequently is that he knows Sakura is well protected. Naruto will protect her with his life, as Sasuke will protect Hinata.

He is almost certain it won't come to that, but it never pays for a shinobi to be certain about anything.

Hinata exits their home silently, and is soon by Naruto's side. He cups her face in his hands and kisses her tenderly.

"Remember," she reminds him when he gets that 'I am going to follow you' look about him. "Kakashi is in Suna, and several of our stronger nin are out of the village. Konoha needs you to stay."

"Fine," he mutters, "I'll stay here."

"Promise me, Naruto-kun," steel laces her still gentle tone, and he winces. They both know what a promise means to him. To them both.

"I promise," he sighs.

"Thank you," she says as he holds her tightly and kisses her brow.

"If I don't hear from you in two days," he tells her, "I'm coming after you – promise or no promise. And I'm bringing Sakura." They all know that is an indirect threat to Sasuke.

Her smile is sweet. "You will hear from me, Naruto-kun."

He gives her one last lingering kiss and tells Sasuke he'll kill him if anything happens to his wife.

Sasuke, of course replies: "Hn."

They are silent on their way to the main gates.

It was a last minute decision to add two to the party, but both Sasuke and Hinata agree it is a prudent course of action.

Hinata greets Shino warmly, and Sasuke nods to Sai.

Seconds later, what is possibly the least talkative quartet of shinobi to ever leave Konoha vanishes silently into what remains of the night.

* * *

Next Chapter: tbd


	32. xvi: Reciprocity

**Guardian**  
**xvi. Reciprocity**

* * *

Kakashi's party is a day away from Suna.

Neji watches their steady progress, glad that the trip has been uneventful.

"They went to Orochimaru."

Neji turns.

It is Inoichi.

Neji is surprised that he is not with his daughter. He left her side only once during her pregnancy and miscarriage.

And that was to guide the small light that left her body back to the stars.

"Ino asked me to come," he offers. "She found out it was Tenten who took Sai's place so he could be with her when… well." He clears his throat. "She is grateful. They both are."

"How is she?" he asks, tentatively.

"Better," Inoichi gives a faint smile. "Shin is watching over her while I am away."

"He is not with Sai?" Neji asks, surprised.

"No," he shakes his head. "Sai asked him to watch over Ino. "Fu and Torune went. So did your father and Itachi."

"Jiraiya was there?"

"Yes," Inoichi gives a faint smile. "Nara, too. He is trying to figure out this mystery of your teammate's tattoo."

"That makes two of us," Neji sighs.

"It makes more than two," Inoichi says cryptically.

But before Neji can ask him what he means, his eyes fix on some point in the mortal realm.

"There," Inoichi, nods, crossing his arms.

Neji follows his gaze to a small band of missing nin setting traps several miles away.

"Opportunists," Inoichi grunts. "They have no idea who they are about to try and trap."

His voice becomes deep and sonorous.

"You are making a mistake," he says.

The five men all stop what they are doing, and listen.

"There is a better place for your traps – four miles from here, due east. There is a large caravan coming through – it will be an easy target."

They stay still a moment longer, and then they are packing up as quickly as they can.

"Impressive," Neji says with admiration. "But what of the caravan?"

"There is no caravan," Inoichi shrugs. "The suggestion will last long enough to get them far out of Kakashi's way. Once they are there, the suggestion will begin to fade. By nightfall they will just think they had an unlucky break.

"You probably just saved their lives," Neji watches them depart. "None of Kakashi's party will take kindly to any kind of attack."

"Peace on paper is not the same as peace in the hearts of the people," Inoichi says wisely. "There are still those who do not trust this era of peace – Danzo was not alone in that."

"And what do you think?" Neji asks, suddenly desperate for another opinion – another viewpoint.

"I think that peace isn't something to be won, or even attained. It is something to be nurtured. Cultivated. Maintained. It will take time for everyone to trust in the established peace. And even then," he considers, "they must not grow complacent, or take it for granted."

He shakes his head.

"It is difficult to be at war, but it is just as difficult to be at peace."

"Will it last?" Neji asks.

"No way of knowing," Inoichi sighs. "But if anyone can keep the Shinobi world united, it is Naruto. Kakashi just has to keep it together until then."

"Can he do it alone?"

"Of course not," Inoichi scoffs. "That is why he has all of us."

Neji watches her fondly as the stars fly from her fingers and scatter into the forest. The old traps she had sensed are quickly rendered useless, and the party continues to travel as if nothing has happened.

He considers the time.

"The others should reach Orochimaru soon."

"Very soon, actually," Itachi manifests. "Go," he tells Neji. "I will watch her."

Neji quirks an eyebrow.

"If they plan on using that genjutsu they've been practicing you should be there. You can monitor them better than I can."

"I have a good replacement," Itachi assures him with a sort of smug kindness.

Neji knows that she is well watched, and their bond means he can monitor her even if he doesn't actively watch over her…

…he just doesn't want to risk anything happening to her again.

The memory of Danzo manipulating her is fresh and raw in his mind.

But when he arrives to watch over Hinata, he sees why Itachi is so confident.

He had expected Shisui.

But it is Mikoto that sits patiently, watching over her son and his comrades.

She acknowledges him with a gentle nod.

And he is reminded again, as he sees the Uchiha watch over her son, his own father guard his niece, and Torune and Fu guard their cousin and husband of their cousin respectively, of the bonds of family.

And the family that is chosen can go beyond the family that is granted.

Because the four that have come to Orochimaru have come for one who is not related to any of them.

Yet they all share a loyalty to her.

She is one of them.

She belongs to Konoha.

She shares the Will of Fire.

And that makes her family.

Later that night, he guards her as she sleeps, still humbled by what she was willing to trade with Orochimaru.

It is as she told Kakashi: everything she does is for her village.

For her comrades.

For her family.

And they are doing the same for her.

* * *

_Next chapter: xvii: Insurgent_

_And we are officially caught up! Next week, two updates!_

_\- GL_


	33. XVI: Confrontation

_a/n: Naruto not my propety._

_Hello, friends! I have been debating about how to present the rest of this story (not what happens, but how to post it). I am leaning toward posting the chapters of Guardian 1-16 and then alternating Kunoichi 17/Guardian17 etc because I think it makes sense to read the story that way. That probably means me adding a 'preview' chapter explaining this is 2 stories being being posted together so it is easier for the reader to see how they line up. I am probably explaining it poorly; I think it will make sense when I start putting things up here. _

_I am so grateful that you have come by to read this, or any of my stories! All of the best, friends. _

* * *

**Kunoichi**  
**XVI. Confrontation**

* * *

The night is brilliantly clear and quiet, and he is working steadily in the library portion of his laboratory, making notes, and eagerly transcribing his latest theories and findings.

When he looks up there is no artifice in his expression.

He is genuinely surprised at the arrival.

"Ah, Sasuke-kun," he caresses the name like a deliciously forbidden sin. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" He looks around and smirks as a second Sasuke steps into view. "And an immediate genjutsu? My, my, you must have come for something special indeed."

"Information," the first Sasuke says in a bored voice.

"Ah, information," Orochimaru spreads his hands. "That always comes at a price."

"Fine," Sasuke replies. "Tell me what I want to know, or you'll die before you can even think about breaking out of the genjutsu."

"That Rinnengan of yours," Orochimaru sighs heavily. "It is - if I may borrow from the younger Nara- so troublesome."

"I am short on time," Sasuke crosses his arms.

Orochimaru looks to the second Sasuke. "That one doesn't say much."

"I don't need to," the second replies in the same bored tone. "I am here to listen."

The first smirks and Orochimaru looks over both Sasukes critically. "I am unfamiliar with this particular technique, but it reminds me of an interrogation genjutsu I read about."

He shrugs and sinks into his chair, which in truth he never left.

"By all means, Sasuke-kun, ask your questions."

* * *

Hinata's Byakugan is activated while Sasuke manages the genjutsu, and Sai and Shino do a quick search of the laboratory and the premises. To everyone's relief there appear to be no human experiments underway, or anything reminiscent of his old sins.

Hinata and Sasuke have practiced this particular jutsu for several weeks now.

It is an interrogation jutsu requiring two shinobi and one target. The person managing the genjutsu first casts a mild genjutsu on the second shinobi that allows them to remain lucid and aware of the surroundings. He then traps the target in the main genjutsu, separating them from reality. It is similar to watching an interrogation through a one-way mirror. The two shinobi observe and can discuss the interrogation inside of the lesser genjutsu, and the one managing the genjutsu projects them to the target. It adds to the target's disorientation if the caster duplicates himself visually, thereby creating more confusion.

This interrogation jutsu requires a high level of concentration and skill to manage the compartmentalized genjutsu. It was intended to be used in the field so two shinobi could conduct an interrogation and gather data while the second could also defend the first. The second serves as the anchor to the outside world, and protects the genjutsu caster. Sasuke is surprised at how fast she adapted to the finer points of the jutsu, but then again, she is a skilled dōjutsu user.

In the separate, lesser portion of the genjutsu, Hinata and Sasuke speak without Orochimaru's notice.

"There isn't anything too worrying in the lab," she tells him. "But he is clearly tracking experiments."

"Where are the others?"

"Checking the compound. I am monitoring the surrounding area – there isn't anyone approaching within a ten kilometer radius."

"Can you extend the radius to twenty?"

She nods.

"Do it."

"Still nothing," she replies.

"Good. Let's get to the seal."

"Hai."

* * *

Orochimaru watches the Sasukes with growing interest. This was proving to be a most entertaining day.

"When did you decide to copy the Strength of a Hundred Seal?"

Orochimaru's eyebrow quirks upward.

"That technique is limited to Tsunade and her apprentice, I am afraid. That is your wife now, isn't it Sasuke-kun? Such an enticing spectrum of genetic possibilities - I can hardly wait to see what your children will be like."

"Answer the question," the second Sasuke says sharply.

Orochimau shrugs elegantly. "The Strength of a Hundred Seal is formed via a process that is incredibly difficult and requires immense skill and perfect chakra control over an extended period of time. That is not something that can simply be copied. The principle behind it, though," he smiles slowly, "the principle can still be applied."

"Applied, how?" he asks flatly

"The human body channels more energy than just chakra, Sasuke-kun. The kind of control and concentration needed to store chakra to a fixed point over time is intense. Your wife and Tsunade are the only two to have mastered this in recent memory. But what if," he leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers, "other kinds of energy can be channeled and harnessed?"

"What kind of energy?"

"Emotional, spiritual, biological," he shrugs. "Each contributes to the generation of chakra. What if the seal itself can gather this energy and convert it to chakra?"

"Impossible," Sasuke spats.

"Not like you to lack imagination, Sasuke-kun," Orochimaru chides. "It is possible. I have done it."

"To what end," Sasuke asks derisively. "Your chakra reserves are large – why would you require such a thing.

"You flatter me," Orochimaru purrs. "It was recently proposed that this could be a generator of sorts – a reserve for a final jutsu to be activated upon death – like the release of a summons."

"You have created another summons?" Sasuke asks acidly. If Orochimaru had turned Tenten into a summons, what did that mean for her? What if she was used so that Orochimaru could transport himself to where she was, possibly to kill Kakashi?

"No," Orochimaru shakes his head, quite unaware of Sasuke's racing train of thought. "It is simply the application of the principle." He eyes Sasuke up and down. "I know you sent her to me," he finally says. "Why?"

"You tell me," Sasuke narrows his eyes dangerously.

"I suspected she was one that keeps her own council. Did you see the work done for her? Some of my best, if I do say so myself. She was an extremely cooperative candidate with an incredibly high tolerance for pain." He raises a hand to stop any protests before they begin. "You know the process is painful and that can't be helped. She had a substantial amount done to her body in a short period of time. At first I was just surprised she survived."

Sasuke clenches his jaw, but says nothing.

"As you know, I always require payment," his eyes glitter. "An exchange if you will. Her proposition was so intriguing, that I agreed to undertake it."

He frowns. "The sealing tattoos? You've done them before."

"Oh, those," he waves his hand dismissively. "Those were my gift to her."

Sasuke feels his hair stand up on the back of his neck. "For what?"

Orochimaru's smile is cunning "For lending her body to me for my experiment."

Both Sasukes become still.

"Presumably you came to ask me about the visible tattoo?" he asks. "You noticed that it is channeling energy and now it is growing?"

Sasuke and Hinata look to each other in their separate genjutsu. Hinata frowns. She had been sure that Tenten wasn't simply going somewhere to get the tattoo embellished, and she could detect the energy reserves, but this… this was beyond any of her suspicions.

"Understand, Sasuke," Orochimaru warms to his topic. "The tattoo is simply the visible anchor to everything – much like the marking on Tsunade's forehead. It is not a true Caged Bird Seal, although I did consult those old records and incorporate it into my research. I presume I do not need to explain to you why that particular mark held significance to the kunoichi?"

Sasuke's gaze does not waver.

"I thought not," Orochimaru smirks. "Tenten does not have the precise chakra control to gather and store energy over time as Tsunade and Sakura have. The pathways had to be created artificially, and the marking that you see is where they culminate. The mark manifested on her when I sealed the energy required to anchor the seal. However," He leans forward in his chair. "I have since made no alterations to that mark. No one has, and yet you see that the mark has changed considerably."

"What is happening?"

"I have absolutely no idea!" Orochimaru chuckles throatily, eyes gleaming. "The alterations in the mark indicate there an evolution in the seal and how it is functioning. I can tell that the kind of energy being channeled and stored has changed. It is almost as if," his eyes glow eerily bright, "the tattoo has taken on a life of its own."

Sasuke's grimace is fierce. "What does that mean for the village – "

"The Village?" he asks, displeased to be interrupted. "Nothing. The energy collecting in the seal is part of a closed system. At the time of her death, the seal will activate and release the energy for the execution of that jutsu specifically – it is of no threat to Konoha."

Orochimaru hears the sword slide out of its sheath and feels the cold press of steel against his neck. Somehow he knows that this is not part of the genjutsu. Still, he looks to Sasuke calmly.

"This could be one of my greatest discoveries," he says, locking eyes with him. "Believe me when I say I do not wish to see the subject compromised in any way. I do not yet see any harmful effects of the seal. I am certain that no matter how the seal and marking evolve, the energy stored can only be directed to activating the final jutsu. It is a very specific seal.

"What kind?" Sasuke asks.

Orochimaru eyes him and something is distant in his eyes. "It is a hybrid of a transportation jutsu and a reverse summons. She actually brought most of the information and research with her when she came. Her theory was solid, but she needed my help and expertise to complete it." Orochimaru shrugs. "It is mundane, really. When Tenten dies, the energy sealed in the tattoo will activate one, final jutsu."

"And what does the completed jutsu do," Sasuke's eyes are dark.

He looks over his former apprentice and chooses his next words very carefully. He is proud of what he has accomplished and has no problems bragging about it. However, he wishes, perhaps absurdly, to afford her just the smallest modicum of privacy.

"At the time of her death," he says slowly, "or, at least when her body's chakra and energy supplies are depleted beyond a specified level, she will be transported back to Konoha."

Sasuke blinks.

"Pedestrian, isn't it?" Orochimaru asks. "It is a boring request, but actually quite ingenious from a research standpoint. The creation of that particular kind of jutsu requires a closed system. Summons only return to one place when released, correct? The jutsu when activated can only do what it was created to do. It allows me to research the seal itself, as well as any alterations to the subject without pesky variables that could redirect the stored energy elsewhere. In addition, using that type of jutsu as the end goal created a failsafe should the seal itself create unforeseen problems like releasing the energy unexpectedly. Worst case scenario, Tenten would find herself back in Konoha."

Orochimaru studies both Sasukes, who are looking to him with a measure of disbelief and trepidation. He steeples his fingers and looks up to the ceiling.

"In the end…" his voice has some unnamed emotion to it. "In the end," he repeats, "she simply wanted to ensure that she would die in Konoha. We shall have to wait for her death to see if the experiment is successful."

Sasuke looks at him distrustfully.

"I am interested in the evolution of the seal and tattoo," Orochimaru says simply. "What happens after that isn't my concern."

"So she hasn't been coming to you to augment the seal."

"Not at all," Orochimaru shakes his head. "I simply observe and test the integrity of the seal itself. I have been monitoring her heart, though," he adds. "This kind of seal could be taxing, but so far she shows no ill effects." He smiles sickly at him. "So there you are, Sasuke-kun. Your comrade has agreed to become my experiment in exchange for the assurance of being transported home upon her death. The sealing tattoos were a commodity… and a way for me to see if she could withstand the process."

Sasuke does not miss the glint in the other man's eyes.

"Oh?"

"Oh, yes," Orochimaru's smile is cold. "You yourself know what endurance is required to have the weapons tattoos placed. But the other seal..." he runs a serpentine tongue over his teeth. "That was something more entirely. I placed everything else on her body – all within two days, working at my leisure. But that seal," his eyes are bright with his hunger for knowledge. "That seal took the better part of a week."

Both Sasukes remain still.

"You see a simple tattoo," he continues. "But it is merely the anchor. Her entire body had to be coded with my chakra to allow for the placement of that seal. It took a week of my life," and his smile is wicked. "And eleven years of hers."

"What?" the second Sasuke gasps

"Mm," he nods. "Eleven years of life-energy. In order to set the original seal, I had to harvest and store eleven years of her life energy. It is not unlike your Mangekyō Sharingan, Sasuke-kun. In that week, she lived an accelerated eleven years in her mind, thereby continually providing me with the materials I then coded and sealed. I urged her to do no more than five," he holds out his hands. "She has effectively shortened her own life by eleven years. I suppose as one who is always expecting to die tomorrow, she didn't see it as much of a sacrifice. In fact, I rather expected her to be dead by now, given her attitude."

The second Sasuke has been the quieter of the two, but is now eyeing Orochimaru calculatingly.

"Why eleven?"

Orochimaru holds Sasuke's gaze unwaveringly. "She said she that had people to protect. As a result," he leans back in his chair, "she is now closer in age to your senseis than your classmates. Make no mistake," he says, his voice bordering on what might pass for sympathetic. "She lived every second of those eleven years, alone and in the landscape of her mind. That energy has been woven into her very being and is stored within the context of the seal."

"The seal is still channeling energy," the first Sasuke states.

"Naturally," Orochimaru shrugs. "However, it is at an infinitesimal rate; nothing that can result in another drastic detraction from her lifespan."

His smile is amused. "That is truly all I have to tell you, Sasuke-kun. I have no more relevant information to impart."

He holds up one hand and murmurs "Kai!"

Orochimaru blinks slowly several times to find Sasuke standing near him, hand on his sword, Rinnengan and Sharingan fading to black. Orochimaru's eyes slide to the clock

"Ten minutes," he muses. "You have improved, Sasuke."

"Hn."

Orochimaru looks to the others and raises his eyebrows coolly, assessing them. "Three shinobi from the Four Noble Clans, and one of Danzo's favorite pets? I am honored. It seems you were expecting trouble," he remarks. "So sorry to disappoint."

"We are leaving," Sasuke says directly. "I expect to hear if anything develops."

Orochimaru's eyes slide lasciviously over Sasuke.

"You know how I love to track my experiments, Sasuke-kun. I'll be sure to share any relevant findings."

Sasuke turns on his heel, and his teammates move to follow.

"I have to say I am impressed," Orochimaru calls after them in a way that makes the others pause cautiously, but catches Sasuke's ear immediately. "It seems the Konoha 11 will still go to quite the extent to ensure the safety of their own."

Sasuke half turns over his shoulder. "Something worth remembering," he warns.

With that they take their leave, this time, each of them on one of Sai's birds. They don't have far to travel, and they will make a point to lodge in a nearby village for the night, as that is where they were expected to be seen when returning from their 'mission.'

They take the last two kilometers on foot and send one of the ink birds and a Sai clone to let Naruto know everyone is safe.

Hinata keeps watch with her Byakugan even as she turns everything over and over in her agile mind. When the realization hits her she gasps out loud, startling the others enough that Sasuke is instantly in front of her scanning the tree tops, Sai is crouched low, and Shino has a swarm of insects at his fingertips.

"What did you see?" Sasuke asks and ready for a fight.

"N-Naruto," she stammers. "He sent a clone. I am sorry – it just surprised me."

They take back to the trees – Sai and Shino running ahead, Hinata protected in the middle, and Sasuke covering the rear.

"What was it really," Sasuke asks quietly. "I don't have the Byakugan and I realized that clone was waiting nearly an hour ago."

"It is what Orochimaru said," she says, her voice hushed and thick. "As we were leaving."

Sasuke raises his eyebrows.

"He was telling us something," she continues. "Something important about the Konoha 11."

"It is the Konoha 9 now," Sasuke says pointedly. "I was not a part of the Konoha 11 and…" He doesn't need to add '_and Neji is gone.'_

"No," Hinata shakes her head. "Take Tenten out of the equation, and add in you and Sai."

"That is eleven," he concedes, "but what does that have to with anything."

"Everything," Hinata says softly. "Don't you see? She said she has people to protect."

Hinata glances up at the moon, and he sees the ghost track of a single tear trailing down her cheek.

"She gave up eleven years, Sasuke-san. She gave one year of her life for each of us."

As much as Sasuke would have liked to dismiss the notion, he instinctively knows that Hinata is right.

"Why return to Konoha, then?" Sasuke questions.

"For the same reason she has done everything she has done since the war ended. For the same reason she takes the missions most likely to end in death." Hinata looks him in the eye. "To be with Him."

They exchange looks. "This entire mission," Sasuke begins slowly.

"Never happened," Hinata whispers. "We will keep our findings between us for now. If there appears to be strain on her heart or her body, we go to Tsunade."

"Not Kakashi?" Sasuke asks.

"No," Hinata shakes her head. "If we have a medical concern, she is the best one to approach. Plus, she can find Orochimaru on her own." Hinata flicks a glance to Sasuke. "Tenten is assigned to Kakashi's guard for now. Let's not worry him unnecessarily."

Sasuke agrees, and Hinata is glad that he doesn't question. The Byakugan can be an inconvenient thing, especially when you happen to observe people who are certain they can't be observed. She adds it to the list of secrets she has been asked to keep, and says no more on the matter.

Their arrival at the small village is uneventful, and it is only one hour after she has slipped into her bed (in her own room in the inn, which is unusual) when the familiar chakra signature materializes.

"I wondered if you'd come," she says sleepily, lifting her head from her pillow.

He is suddenly in her bed and holding her, and she settles into the crook of his shoulder, contentedly.

"I missed you too much," Naruto admits, kissing her forehead. "It isn't the same when you aren't at home."

"I missed you, too, Naruto-kun," she smiles sleepily. "I am glad you are here."

Soon she drifts to sleep in his arms, thanking whatever star saw fit to grant her every heart's whisper when it brought him to her. She understands what it is to live in the shadows of expectations and dreams, and protocol, and she offers up a kind thought for her friend. Perhaps someday, her heart will lighten as well.

Or, perhaps, it has already begun.

* * *

_And there's the explanation :)  
__Much more to come, so thank you for reading, and please continue with me!  
__As always I remain gratefully yours,  
__ \- Giada_


	34. xvii: Insurgent

_Greetings, friends!  
__I apologize for the delay; I was unable to post, despite having had the chapter finished. Send happy thoughts!_

* * *

**Guardian**  
**xvii. Insurgent**

* * *

The journey to Suna is swift, and without incident.

Two hours from arrival, Temari intercepts their traveling party.

"We think there is a threat to both Gaara and Kakashi," she informs them. "There was a failed attempt on Gaara's life last night. We caught the assailant, but didn't get much information out of him. Intelligence thinks that this meeting is a potential target."

"Target for whom?" Genma crosses his arms, and she grimaces.

"We aren't sure."

Captain Yamato exchanges a look with Tenten before asking, "Then why do you think Kakashi is a target?"

"The man we apprehended was ranting about Gaara becoming Kakashi's lapdog, and dragging Suna under Konoha's control." She meets Kakashi's cool gaze. "It is not the first time we've heard those kinds of rumblings, but it is the first time anyone has acted on it in so extreme a manner."

She turns back to Captain Yamato.

"We don't think he acted alone."

"So there is still a potential threat to the diplomatic meetings in general, and both Gaara and Kakashi specifically," the Captain surmises.

"Yes."

Kakashi and Yamato have a silent exchange.

"Then we shall revise our security plans," Captain Yamato says, walking several meters away and calling forth a wooden structure from the ground.

Four hours later, Kakashi and his traveling party arrive and are welcomed by the Kazekage and his siblings. The majority of Suna is very pro-Shinobi Alliance, and particularly loyal to Naruto, and thus Konoha by extension. Many stand in awe of the legendary Kakashi, and they turn out in droves to see him.

There is no incident that night.

The next morning, Kakashi is immediately swept into a full complement of meetings and diplomatic obligations. He is always seen in the company of Shizune and Captain Yamato, both of whom are part of the diplomatic proceedings.

Genma, Raidō, and Iwashi are the listed guards of the Hokage, and are well known for their use of the Flying Thunder God Technique. They are given deferential treatment, even by the other security personnel.

Tenten is nowhere to be seen.

"_And that is the point," _Neji thinks to himself.

Tenten traveled back with Temari's group yesterday and had been brought in stealthily.

He watches as she becomes an invisible face in the meetings, dressed as one of the normal attendants from Suna. As soon as the meetings are over, she melts into the shadows and guards the Hokage, unseen and unheard.

At nightfall, she hunts.

This is her seventh night.

Neji stays by her side as she slinks up rooftops and drops between alleys.

An escape for the one who attacked Gaara has been arranged, and she is following him.

The isolationist group is not well organized, but they are well armed. They hide in the basement of an abandoned building, and outline their plans.

Tenten eyes the building from the inside.

She could collapse it with a few well-placed tags. She could probably do it before they even suspected she was there.

Briefly the idea of staying and sacrificing herself to make sure the building collapses flits through her mind, but the thought does not take hold.

She will not die without fighting.

There is a large man sitting in front of a locked door, absently playing a game of solitaire.

A snap of his neck and he would never sound an alarm.

She hesitates.

Neji watches carefully as she crushes something in her gloved hand before covering the man's mouth and nose.

He passes out with less than an attempt at a struggle, and she takes his ring of keys.

She has found their armory.

Something tugs at her mouth behind the mask.

In seconds, she has sealed all of their weaponry away and locked the door.

Three minutes later, the arguing group of men fall silent.

She leaves the building, and within fifteen minutes, Kankuro arrives with a squad to collect and arrest them all.

Tenten watches from the shadows and gives a small laugh as the insurgents snore through their capture.

"She resolved that peacefully," Rin gives a happy sigh. "That is a good sign."

"Is it?" Neji asks mildly.

"She could've just eliminated them," Rin points out.

"I suppose they weren't much of a threat," Neji shrugs.

"No, they weren't," she allows. "They are disorganized in the extreme. But they were willing to kill, Neji. She could've taken them down as a terrorist cell – but she didn't."

Neji ponders this.

Rin is right, of course. Tenten would've been well within ANBU protocol to eliminate the members of every one of the groups she'd found – and especially this main one, but she didn't.

Why is that?

That night she is sitting on the highest rooftop, overlooking Suna and the sea of stars.

Neji sits next to her.

"Why?" he asks. "Why not eliminate them all?"

Her eyes are on a distant star.

She shrugs, eyes distant and unfocused.

They sit in silence, and he knows she isn't truly registering his presence.

"Second chances," she mumbles to herself, and he can hear the whispers of her heart.

"_Naruto would have let them go. He would have talk-no-jutsued them into accepting us. I can't do that. I don't have any words left. But if I had wiped them out in Konoha's name… I would've proven them right. But was it a mistake?"_ she questions herself. "_Is it still an act of mercy if they attack again and lives are lost?"_

"You did the right thing," Neji says quietly. "They weren't soldiers. They are scared men and women who remember a time when our villages were at war. There was no room for mercy in that world," he sighs, looking up at the night sky.

"Maybe there's room in this one," she whispers.

He slides a glance at her.

She is hugging her knees, just as she used to do all those years ago.

She looks younger.

More hopeful.

The Hokage stays in Suna for another week.

Neji stays by her side, as always.

He does not miss the resigned look on her face when she finally has to take out the remaining member of the last cell of insurgents.

He is angry and bitter and ready to kill, and has already seriously wounded several of Gaara's men, as well as one of his own that he decided was in his way.

"_No room for mercy this time_," her heart whispers, and although there is no hesitation in her killstrike (and it is as swift and kind as such a thing can be) there is just the barest flicker of regret in her eyes.

For so long she has concentrated only on her missions, determined to earn her way into the cohort of those memorialized in stone and to return to his side.

She has been a soldier and an assassin.

And while it was all to protect her village and by extension those she loves, today she is actively a protector.

She knows that while both Gaara and Kakashi were the intended targets (Kakashi for being an outsider and Gaara for liaising with him), the real target was the peace that so many had fought and died to bring to the Shinobi world.

If she lets that die, then she lets Neji die for nothing, and that simply cannot be.

Besides.

Gaara isn't just the Kazekage, and close with Naruto who will undoubtedly succeed Kakashi as Hokage, cementing the alliance between Suna and Konoha.

Gaara is dear to Lee.

If anything had happened to him, her remaining partner – who despite her not being able to show it is one of her dearest people and she loves him with all that she has left – would be heartbroken.

She can't stand to see his heart break again.

Neji knows this is why she did not cry when he died. She allowed Lee to shed their tears, and she shouldered her pain in silence.

The last enemy dispatched, she returns to the shadows.

Silent as dewfall, she sublimates in the private rooms of the Kazkekage.

Temari is waiting for her.

Tenten hands over a scroll containing the last of the weapons and documents from the insurgent group. A second scroll contains the bodies; there is no trace of their work or their demise.

"Thank you," Temari breathes, finally releasing the tension that had coiled at the base of her throat for weeks. "You have spared our people – and yours – great pain."

"We are allies and comrades now," she replies evenly. "We must protect what peace there is to be had."

Temari locks and seals the scrolls away and then turns back to Tenten, hand outstretched.

"This time I'm thanking you as an older sister," she says, her unwavering gaze warmer now. "Thank you for protecting my brother, and everything he has fought to build – everything he has become."

Tenten hesitates, not because she doesn't recognize the distinction in the gesture, but because she recognizes the enormity in accepting it. She has been a shadow, not a person, in the service of her village. She simply fulfilled her assignment and requires no thanks.

But perhaps it is something instinctual in the clever sand kunoichi's eyes that recognizes that this time, that is not strictly the case.

Temari has seen hearts struggle against dark forces greater than themselves – her world has been full of it. She knows the ache of a soul in pain and in darkness and alone.

Neji can feel the shift as she accepts Temari's hand.

Temari pulls Tenten into a swift hug.

"And now," she murmurs, "I thank you as a friend. Because I know kunoichi like us who have lost many to protect the few always walk a part of our life alone.

Tenten is stiff in her arms, and too surprised to speak.

But she does not push the other woman away.

Temari holds her out at arms-length.

"Just remember," she squeezes her shoulders firmly. "You aren't alone now." A smug grin unravels the serious bend of her features. "I'd kick Samurai ass with you any day of the week."

The sound is sharp and quick, but it hangs in the air, as unexpected as a specter from another world.

A laugh.

Her laugh.

Short, and more of a bark, but a laugh nonetheless.

Temari's grin is wide now, because she is incredibly clever.

She knows a victory when she sees one.

Tenten departs shortly thereafter, but her heart is humming in the silence.

"_I'm not alone," _she muses with another glance to the stars – for the only skies she has seen on this mission have been night skies. "_Perhaps..."_ she allows herself to consider, "_Perhaps I never was."_

And it is Neji's turn to claim a victory.

No matter how small.

* * *

_Thank you for returning to read, friends. - GL_


	35. XVII: Efflorescence

_notesnots_

* * *

**Kunoichi**  
**XVII. Efflorescence**

* * *

The remainder of the time in Suna goes smoothly.

Shikamaru joins them for the last several days, and stays on to address minutia between Konoha and Suna, specifically. Shizune stays as well, acting as Kakashi's representative (and because, truth be told, she handles much of the minutia for Kakashi just as she did for Tsunade, and probably will for Naruto).

Temari will escort them all back to Konoha in two weeks, inspect several matters, and report back to Gaara.

Now that she is not needed in the shadows, Tenten resumes her role as personal guard to the Hokage.

She is rarely far from Kakashi's side, and is ever alert to their surroundings.

She flings a kunai into the thick of the woods and an alarmed cry erupts the twilight peace of the camp.

Genma returns to the circle of the fire, scowling.

"You missed," he says flatly, handing her back her weapon.

"So did you," she flicks a glance to his shoes and back up.

His face reddens as the other men erupt into laughter.

"You'd piss on your foot, too, if someone flung a weapon within centimeters of your head while you were trying to take a leak," he grunted.

She arches an eyebrow, and he holds up his hands in surrender.

"Okay," he tries not to smile at the ridiculousness of his statement. "Maybe not."

He'd been relentless in his attempts to prank her, with no success.

She had definitely bided her time and won this round.

They extinguish the fire, and Yamato creates their lodgings.

"So much better than tents," Genma sighs happily. "Mind your bedroll," he warns Tenten devilishly.

"I wouldn't recommend that," Captain Yamato says, watching as she disappears into the woods to set a series of traps. "You know she missed on purpose."

"Yeah, I know," Genma gives a small chuckle.

He doesn't say, but he is fond of Tenten.

Gai, Genma, and Ebisu had all been on a genin team together. When Gai could no longer take missions, he had taken it upon himself to keep tabs on Tenten and Lee whenever he could. Now that she is assigned to Kakashi, it makes his self-imposed mission that much easier.

Since Yamato has dispatched several wood clones to stand guard, they decide only one shinobi need keep watch at a time.

She takes first watch.

She sits on the roof, eyes fixed on the moon.

She visually traces the constellations, and nights of scrying the stars come back to her.

She always loved fortune telling, but has long since discarded the hobby.

There is no sense looking for the future when a person doesn't have one.

But, effortlessly, the names and interpretations flick across her mind, and follow her even when her watch ends and Raidō takes her place.

The return trip to Konoha is quick. Everyone gets cleared by the medics, and Kakashi heads back into his paperwork.

Luckily, there isn't as much as he feared – it seems Shizune had worked far enough ahead for him to have a fairly easy return.

He cites fatigue from the mission and excuses himself early.

Later, Pakkun returns with her in tow.

"You sent for me?" she asks.

He nods to the table, and she sinks into the chair, some distant part of her recognizing it as 'her' seat. Soon a plate of food is in front of her.

They recap the mission, and discuss the state of affairs in Suna.

"Kankurō seems to think that we rounded up the last of that particular insurgent group" she reports. "Luckily, their efforts were disrupted before they could really organize."

"By my calculations," Kakashi muses "I am the only member of the Konoha group that had consistently decent sleep."

"You were the only one that needed it," she shrugs. "Seemed to be a fair trade-off for spending sixteen to eighteen hours a day in diplomatic meetings."

"Fair point," he says wryly. "The return squad has been given two recovery days."

"I heard," she presses a napkin to her lips before standing with him to bring her plate into the kitchen.

He flicks on the kettle before washing the dishes while she dries and puts them away. She pauses, wondering when she memorized where everything goes. A shinobi should always be hyperaware of their environment, but she isn't certain that strictly applies to where one keeps the teacups.

She must have lingered too long, because she hears him go still behind her. A hand plants on the counter, and she feels his chest against her back as he reaches over her to bring down two mugs. He has picked his favorite, but her breath catches when she realizes the second one is the one she prefers the most.

It brings back a sharp recollection of a different hand and a different mug and a different time, and she waits for the familiar knifeslice to the ribs.

But it doesn't come.

The recollection doesn't bring the lancing pain, and she doesn't know whether to be relieved or frightened.

The mugs are placed to the side, and a hand is planted on either side of her. She can feel the warmth of him behind her, but she does not lean into him. She holds herself tightly raveled within her own boundaries.

When he does speak, his voice is low and sure.

"Finding that you have a place somewhere new," he says quietly, "doesn't take away from the other places where you've belonged."

She remains still. Unsure. Teetering on a brink in her own mind.

"I don't know that I belong anywhere."

It is a full ten seconds before she realizes the quiet admission was hers. It hangs heavy over her, a pendulous weight on a thin cord.

"I know."

She closes her eyes and wills herself to see nothing – to clear her mind. To ignore the memories skimming just below the surface of her consciousness like restless specters.

"But you have a place to come back to."

He makes no move to turn her around.

"Wherever someone is thinking of you, that is a place you can return to. That is 'home.'"

She ignores the sting and heat behind her eyes. Home was once Konoha. Then it became her team and friends. Then it became in _his_ eyes and arms, and then it was all gone. Places were just places, there was nothing.

"_When you are ready._" Hinata had said. "_When you are ready to come home, we will all be here for you."_

The kettle erupts into an insistent whistle, snapping her back to reality.

Tenten looks to the mugs on the counter.

She reaches for the now-familiar canister.

"I'll pour the tea," she says quietly. He steps back and lets her work while he readies the fire in the other room.

She lies against him, enjoying his warmth.

Their time in Suna did not allow for such intimacies.

As his fingers trace lazy circles along her arms, she can almost admit that she has missed it.

Almost.

She finally turns and kisses him slowly – deeply, reveling in the feel of his hands on her skin. She presses palms against his chest, loving him gently. But it has been too long, and soon nothing is gentle. The second time, though, is far less frantic - less frenzied.

His hand skims over her, his eyes tracing the tattoo. Green swirls up over her heart and shoulder, it winds along her side and over her hip. He traces it carefully with fingers and lips and teeth and tongue. He tastes her until she cries out, and for perhaps the first time, they are both truly present to the other.

And the ghosts are still.

* * *

endnote


	36. xviii: Renaissance

**Guardian**  
**xviii. Renaissance**

* * *

The shinobi world is changing.

Villages that once had to remain hidden to protect their own are now known locations.

Technology is beginning to develop in Kumo, and at an alarming rate.

More and more people – civilians – are moving to Konoha.

The world is changing around them all.

Neji watches it as it unfolds, one invention, one new resident, one treaty at a time.

Kakashi schedules more diplomatic missions, and has more meetings discussing agendas months and years from the present date.

It amazes the Hyūga.

It amazes him that she is silent behind the Hokage the whole time.

It amazes him that in these meetings, there is discussion of dates far beyond when she thought she would live.

It amazes him that she is blooming.

The world around them is shifting and changing and growing.

Naruto has discovered he will become a father, and there is a good chance that all of the Land of Fire now knows about it.

Sasuke is being called on more and more missions, and away from the village, and Sakura has decided to go with him. They are well out of the village before she reveals that he too, will be a father.

His reaction is priceless.

Ino takes comfort that Karui and Temari are also pregnant, and tries to keep her fears at bay. Neji sees Shin and Inoichi with her all of the time, now, and has been told that this child's light is destined to stay on the mortal plane.

"The Ino-Shika-Cho trio lives on," Asuma says fondly, watching his former students. "It is a shame Mirai won't be old enough to be their sensei," he remarks. "But perhaps she will be the one to give the children their earrings."

"Will Konohamaru be their sense?" Neji asks.

"Oh," Asuma looks to his father and shares a conspiratorial smile. "I have a feeling there are other things in store for the biggest pain-in-the-ass-kid since Naruto. At least if I know Kakashi…"

Neji shrugs, not quite following what the two men are considering, but he doesn't mind.

Watching these lives unfold – that is the beauty of it all.

He watches Tenten as she hears about the children, one by one. But when she hears about Lee's child-to-be – and Neji is certain it will be a son – she is genuinely happy.

She gasps in honest surprise and her eyes well with tears that she didn't remember could be happy. Lee wraps her in the biggest hug of her life that day, and holds her while she sobs silently into his shoulder.

He knows that she cannot have children.

He found out on accident, when he visited her in the hospital several years ago. A young nurse, mistaking his relationship to Tenten had started to tell him how sorry she was, making him think, at first, that she had died.

Luckily Sakura had been nearby, and dismissed the girl with a sharp look (and gave her quite the lecture afterwards) before taking Lee aside.

"It isn't something anyone should know," Sakura worried her lip, "But since the nurse told you…"

"I won't say anything," Lee had promised her, with an unusual calm.

So when Tenten weeps – and finally weeps for the children she will never have – he understands how deep her pain runs.

She arrives at Kakashi's exhausted in mind and heart and her composure threadbare.

He lets her in without a word, but when he locks the door behind her, she wraps her arms around him and presses her cheek to his back. He pauses, palm on the door, and listens.

"I…I don't want to be alone tonight. Please."

There is a loneliness in the blank honesty of her request, and he is quick to assure her.

"I'll make the tea."

And soon she is sipping from her mug, lost in thought.

Kakashi drops her blanket from Lee around her shoulders and she thanks him with a nod.

He takes his own tea and sits and reads, allowing her the time to collect her thoughts.

"I can't have children," she says, her words heavy and leaden in the air between them. "Not since my first year in ANBU. And…" she collects her thoughts and tries to spin coherence from the sorrows and specters so long ignored.

"And," she clears her throat, "When I first found out…I was relieved."

Kakashi simply replies, "Oh?"

"Yes," she stares into her tea. "For so many reasons. We…" she swallows hard. "Neji and I… we had discussed kids, I guess, but we both knew they weren't an option until this," she tapped two fingers over her heart where the green marking was inked into her skin, "was no longer an issue. We… we would have waited," she says with finality. "I wanted to have kids – his kids – but I wanted to see his dreams more."

She glances over at him.

"When he died… it no longer mattered to me. That injury took the decision out of my hands, but it was the decision I had already made. It meant I could never form another attachment that would keep me from joining him… not something else to make me stay…"

She trails off.

"I'm still relieved," she admits. "I don't have it in me to be a parent." She meets his eyes, and he sees how heavily the admission weighs on her. "I can't have someone else left behind – at least not someone dependent upon me. I can give my life for my friends and family, but I don't know that I could live it for them."

She looks down sharply, watching her own reflection in the steaming mug of tea.

"And with everyone growing their families," she whispers. "There is so much more to protect."

Kakashi wordlessly takes the mug from her hands and places it to the side. He gathers her to himself and holds her close.

"You are enough," he says simply.

And for whatever reason it is what she needs to hear.

The rest of their evening is quiet. Not long after, her carries her to his bed, pulls the covers over them both, and says, "Sleep."

She obeys.

The dawn finds them in much the same position, but there is a distinct difference.

The tattoo has grown again.

Neji sees how it arcs over her shoulder, and curls onto her back, even though neither she nor Kakashi notices that morning.

He traces his fingertips over the marks.

"I didn't want children," he admits. "Not until I was with you."

He kisses her temple.

"In another time. Another life," he promises. "A life with no cages."

It is a promise he swears to keep.

* * *

_If Neji had lived, his memoir might have been titled "A Life Uncaged." Also, the working title for another NejiTen story. Thank you for reading, friends. I am - as always - so grateful for your support._

_ \- GL_


	37. XVIII: Genesis

_I rearranged some chapters; This one was originally from Neji's point of view, but I think it worked better from the living-world perspective. Enjoy!_

* * *

**Kunoichi**  
**XVIII. Genesis**

* * *

Months have passed.

Now that her mission is to protect Kakashi specifically, she is more careful with her own life.

While she will willingly lay down her life for both her Hokage and her village, she has to be less cavalier, now.

She still volunteers for missions that could harm her friends.

But where before she was committed to solely the success of the mission no matter the personal cost, now she is more determined to succeed and return, for she has work to finish.

It still isn't love – not like what she had with Neji.

It will never be like it was with Neji.

But there is something in her opening up; something reviving.

And even as the green of the tattoo continues to vine across her skin, she is turning toward the sun.

Kakashi, too, is changing.

It is subtle, but there is something more at peace in the landscapes of his soul.

They take solace in one another.

They are healing.

When she arrives back from her latest visit to Orochimaru, Lee meets her at the gate.

He has no idea where she has been – and urges her to join he and Gai for a meal.

She agrees, provided she can first turn in her report and go home to change.

She managed to have a side mission this time, so she does indeed have a report to turn in.

But it is now protocol for her to report to the Hokage whenever she leaves or returns to the village.

He had long ago divined where she was going.

He sorely misses the use of his Sharingan – it would have made him feel better if he could use that enhanced sight to inspect the tattoo.

So he does the next best thing.

He contacts Sasuke, both as one who knows Orochimaru well, and as the only true Sharingan user left.

When both Sasuke and Hinata arrive at meeting, he does little more than quirk an eyebrow.

Still respecting the privacy thus far afforded to her by Orochimaru as well as he and Hinata's mutual decision, they both assure Kakashi that Orochimaru is monitoring the kunoichi and has a vested interest in keeping her alive and well.

Of course, they are also monitoring her.  
And Sakura always makes a point to conduct her medical examinations personally, and if she isn't present, Ino is.  
And Sai reports on anything if they are assigned on joint missions.  
As does Kiba.  
And Shino.  
And Naruto.  
And Choji.  
And Shikamaru.  
And Temari and Karui both make a point so see her when they can.  
Even Yoshino and Tsume have been known to stick a motherly nose (in Tsume's case, literally) into Tenten's affairs.

Both Sasuke and Hinata agree to report directly to Kakashi should anything of note arise.

Sasuke leaves to check in with Sakura – she and Sarada were sleeping when he left, but he can't bring himself to stay away for very long.

Hinata stays a moment longer at Kakashi's bidding.

"Do you think we should mention this to Naruto?" he asks.

She is surprised that he is consulting her, but she considers the question.

"Naruto has a strange way of knowing things," she says slowly. "I do not think we need to tell him. Not yet."

Kakashi nods agreement.

"And Tenten…?" Hinata asks. "Is she adjusting well to her new post?"

"I believe so," Kakashi rubs his chin.

"She seems…" Hinata pauses, deciding how best to phrase her thoughts.

Her eyes drift somewhere behind Kakashi as she thinks, and Kakashi wonders how far away those eyes can see. Across miles? Years?

"She seems to have taken to a more defined assignment better than I would have thought," she says. "That makes me glad."

She gives a small smile and excuses herself with a bow, but stops after a few paces.

"If…If I may be so bold…as to make a request?"

Kakashi raises his eyebrows at her. She is not stammering. She is choosing her words carefully.

"Please do," he says, and it is said sincerely.

"Had Neji lived," she begins, "she would have become my sister. She would have fallen under the protection of my clan. My father and I tried to extend this to her after the war… but I see now that isn't what she needed, because it didn't replace what she lost."

"Oh?"

Hinata shakes her head.

"She and Neji were teammates even before they became friends. The one constant in her life was that she always had his back, and he hers. She guarded his blindspot, you see."

Kakashi meets her gaze, and while it is respectful, it is not timid or wavering.

"That, more than just my cousin and her heart, was taken from her. She will guard you with her life," she says, quiet voice full of something heavy. "As one who still considers her as family, all I can ask, is that you have her back."

"I will," Kakashi promises.

"Then, you will need this," she pulls a small scroll out and hands it to him. "It is a privacy seal that Neji wrote. It can keep the Byakugan from penetrating. She uses something similar, but…" the tops of Hinata's ears pink, "but I believe she transcribed it incorrectly. She must've omitted Neji's name from the seal. That would disrupt the order of things, allowing the person following his name to see beyond it."

Kakashi holds her gaze a little longer, his face growing warm under his mask.

"Luckily," Hinata clears her throat. "I am the only name that adjoined his. This should correct the error."

Kakashi takes the scroll, now fully understanding.

"In a clan where everyone can see everything," Hinata says, a note of something different in her voice, "we value privacy highly. I would not want yours to be intruded upon, however accidentally."

He manages not to cringe.

Just.

"Thank you," he mumbles. "I'll see to it that she gets this."

She considers Kakashi a moment.

"I can't tell you how I know," she says, and her voice is steadfast in its truth, "but I know that Neji watches out for her. And I know…" she gathers courage on her tongue to say what needs to be said. "I know that he would thank you. For everything."

A flash of understanding passes between them, and she bows politely.

And Kakashi is certain that the subject will never come up again; Hinata has said all she will ever say on the matter.

"She'll make a good wife to the Hokage," he muses aloud. "She will see much, say little, and stay by his side every step of the way."

That night he can't help but chuckle when Tenten tells him of her dinner with Gai and Lee. Their conversation is easy even as she checks the traps and resets her seals (he tells her only that the original was compromised, not why or how or anything else) and he (at her urging) ensures his own weapons are sharpened.

They are still both broken and battle hardened and weary.

And neither replaces the gaps of loss in the other.

But they have come together in a strange sort of unpredictable fit, that neither is willing to question.

Nothing they have replaces what they had.

It is something new.

It is a beginning.

And it is good.

* * *

_Not much left for this story, friends. I am so glad you have come along on this experiment with me!_

_ \- Giada_


	38. xix: New Hope

_notes at the bottom - GL_

* * *

**Guardian**  
**xix. New Hope**

* * *

The next generation of Konoha is off to a promising start.

Neji watches Hinata read to Boruto, her middle already thickening with her second child. The small, blond boy is fond of Tenten, who harbors a secret soft spot for the child named to honor his Uncle. In her weapon shop, she melts down one of Neji's shuriken, long ago retired and blunted from overuse, but harbored away and always with her. As she refashions the metal, her inner light burns, flickers, and dances and she almost looks happy.

He wonders if she is refashioning her grief – her past – into hope.

She gives Hinata the necklace with the screw pendant, never once mentioning that she made it, or how.

But Neji has learned that his cousin's intuition borders on soul-reading, and when she accepts the gift, she does it as one that knows precisely what she has been given.

The other children are growing as well.

Shikadai watches the world through intelligent, disinterested eyes, while Inojin quietly takes everything in. ChōChō is a happy, playful baby who already shows signs of bossing the other two around. Ino and Karui and Temari make sure that the children have plenty of time to play together, because this generation shouldn't have to fight like the last one did.

Inoichi and Shikaku and Shin are never far from the three children, and neither is Asuma. (Who also watches over Mirai and Kurenai, but who has a strong affection for the children of his students.)

Sasuke is called away more and more from the village, so when he is in Konoha, he is never far from his wife and child. Tenten has appeared on several missions with him, and always brings him news of his daughter.

"She will be excellent at shurikenjutsu," she assures him. "You can count on me to help with her training when you are not at home."

Sasuke knows the praise is not made lightly, nor is the offer, and his thanks are sincere. He doesn't ask how she knows this about Sarada. He himself has come to the same conclusion

She fashions several weapons – they are sharper and lighter and require more control- and gives them to him to test.

They fly from his fingers as deadly birds of prey, and he is pleased with the alteration in design and construction.

"Keep them," she instructs. "When it is time," she nods to the weapons, "I will make her a set."

"When it is time," he allows.

And they both hope that the time comes with age and not necessity, for they saw too much before their childhood was spent.

The Hokage is still called to travel, and she is unfailingly his guard. Wherever she goes – no matter on what mission, even if it is solely to see Orochimaru - she always brings something back for Metal Lee. Lee's wife is gentle and kind, and quickly learned that this person was of no threat to her marriage or her child.

She knows that Tenten's love for Lee is one of unequivocal loyalty, and that she adores her son – and that is enough for her.

Neji thinks that if he had lived, he would have liked this woman, and that the four of them might have been friends.

He watches Metal Lee and wonders, would his own son or daughter have been a friend to the boy?

The year slides by and Himawari is born.

Neji is certain that this child is part sunshine, and the light in Tenten's being is always warmer when around the her.

She still cannot go to his grave, but she tells Neji of the children in whispers at the memorial.

"I will watch over them," she promises. "I cannot relpace the Uncle they lost, and I do not know that I have it left in me to be family… but I shall watch over them."

She is as good as her word and better.

And the light in her grows.

At the inauguration of the Seventh Hokage, she stands masked and in full ceremonial ANBU gear.

Naruto has finally achieved the dream once deemed impossible by so many, then later perceived as inevitable.

The porcelain mask hides the tears that trail silver down her cheeks, as she weeps to see a dream fulfilled. Neji stands beside her, and somehow he knows she senses his presence.

Her service to the Hokage has ended.

Kakashi will continue as an ambassador and liasion to the Elemental Nations, and will travel often.

His first journey as a former Hokage is diplomatic, and Gai will accompany him, as will Mirai.

And although it is Kakashi that suggests the chunin's assignment to Shikamaru, it is at Tenten's recommendation.

"She wants to leave the village," Tenten tells Kakashi one night when they are far from Konoha and camped on a hill of stars.

"How do you know?"

"I know the look," she gives a half shrug. "She will want to travel. To see things."

"She is Asuma's daughter," Kakashi sighs, amused. He lies back with his hands behind his head and looks up to the dancing pinpoints of light.

"When the time comes," Tenten keeps her eyes focused on the skies, "she should join us."

"Oh?" Kakashi asks. "Us?"

"I won't leave you," she says simply. "I will protect you, as I promised."

"And what of the Hokage?"

"I am loyal to my village," she replies. "I will do whatever I am asked."

But they know that she will not be assigned to Naruto.

And Neji knows this is Naruto's doing.

Several days before his inauguration, Naruto places flowers at Neji's grave.

"I want you to know that everyone is taken care of," he kneels and brushes his fingers across the stone. "Hinata, Hanabi, Lee, Tenten – all of them. You gave everything for us, and I will do everything I can to make sure that sacrifice is never in vain."

He never voices a reason for his decision, but Neji thinks perhaps he feels Tenten will be happier and less of a target if she is assigned to Kakashi.

Whatever the logic, it appears to be a sound decision.

The years slide by, and she is Kakashi's shadow.

But she lives less and less in the darkness.

The thin silver thread between them thickens – but it never develops into the red that binds Neji to Tenten.

And Neji knows the difference between love and solace.

Even if they are together most nights now, and their lives have become strangely intertwined – he cannot feel anything other than peace.

They travel together.

They eat together.

They take care of one another.

They do not live together, but they are _alive_ together.

And together they have the one thing Neji and Tenten can no longer have.

A tomorrow.

"Does it bother you?"

Neji shakes his head.

"No. You know that it can't."

Asuma gives a small chuckle and folds his arms. "I know it shouldn't be able to," he shrugs, "but you appear to be an exception to many things."

Neji gives his head a small shake.

"She was always an exception. To everything."

And he patiently waits for the day to tell her that in person.

* * *

_So much going on, friends. Thanks for sticking with me. Very little left to this story; Confidences, Shield, Polaris, and (maybe) twin epilogues, and that's it. I really appreciate the feedback. - gL_


	39. XIX: Confidences

_I hoped to have this out yesterday. Next update will be next week, friends._

* * *

**Kunoichi**  
**XIX. Confidences**

* * *

It has been several years since the Chunin exams, and the New Generation has come into their own.

Ironically, Sasuke is home more, and Sarada is home less.

That being said, it isn't unheard of for Sasuke to occasionally be in the area when Konohamaru's team has a more difficult mission.

This time he is back in Konoha several days ahead of his daughter, (and his former student Boruto has assured him quietly that he will get Sarada home safely, which earns a raised eyebrow from Sasuke) and is enjoying a quiet cup of tea while his wife pours over several files. He is debating bringing up the growing closeness between their daughter and Naruto and Hinata's son, but whatever work she has brought home from the hospital is apparently both perplexing and engrossing her.

"That can't be right," she murmurs, tapping her pencil on her notepad. She pulls another file and flips it open, scanning it with the speed of one used to having to read medical charts quickly. Her eyebrows raise and then furrow as she continues her research.

Finally, she sits back and drums her fingers on the files, thinking.

Sasuke catches her eye and they sit in silence as she sorts her thoughts.

He gives a minute arch of one brow.

"It doesn't make any sense," she spreads her hands over the files. "I've gone through each of these files, and they all have the same discrepancy."

He continues to keep his eyebrow raised.

"Look here," she pushes several files over to him, before crossing to stand behind him as he flicks them open. "Five different medics. Five different files. One patient. Same discrepancy. How can that happen?"

Sasuke scans the documents in less than a heartbeat.

"And the discrepancy is?"

"Look at the age of the patient," Sakura says impatiently.

Sasuke looks at them all.

"They all say the same thing," he says calmly.

"And do you see who the patient is?" she presses.

"No, because it has been redacted."

"Oh," she waves a chakra infused palm over the pages. "There. NOW do you see who the patient is?"

He does indeed.

And he is fairly certain he knows what is about to come.

"It's Tenten," Sakura blurts out. "She is only a year ahead of us. How is it I have five separate medics that have suddenly made her four years younger than our Sensei?"

"Typographical error?" he suggests. "Transcription error?"

"I checked," she shakes her head. "The trouble is, they don't ask age – not when an ANBU member comes in. We use a standard jutsu to determine it. It is a basic, basic skill. Are they all messing it up? It can't just be the individuals being incompetent. And it isn't some odd ANBU interference; there is no problem with literally any other ANBU file. Tenten's is the only one. How can that be?"

Sasuke gives a thoughtful "Hm."

Sakura narrows her eyes.

"You know something," she fists her hands onto her hips.

He watches her warily, having seen her level a land formation just last week.

"I might," he allows, knowing it is pointless to deny it.

"Then explain," she says, sitting on the table and facing him. "Because I'm at a loss."

And that is how he and Hinata take Sakura into their confidence.

She schedules a physical for Tenten as soon as she is in the village. She uses Katsuyu to gather more information, and consults with Tsunade privately. One of the smaller slugs also goes to Orochimaru, who is surprisingly cooperative.

Several months later, Kakashi and Tenten are out of the village, but Tsunade has come to visit.

It is a somber cup of tea shared between student and master.

"Eleven years," Sakura whispers. "And all this time…" she shakes her head. "That tattoo…I've noticed how it has changed over the years, but I never suspected… and Orochimaru has no idea how or why the tattoo is growing?"

"That is what he says," Tsunade nods. "For what it is worth, I believed him when he said it."

Sakura wraps her hands around the fresh mug of tea, thinking.

"Sasuke used a genjutsu to show me exactly what he and Hinata have observed with the Sharingan and Byakugan," she muses. "Turns out the two of them have known about this for a while and have been keeping watch on the tattoo."

"Does Kakashi know?" Tsunade asks bluntly.

"I don't know how much he knows," Sakura answers carefully, "but he is aware."

"Kakashi isn't stupid," Tsunade snorts. "He doesn't have to know the 'what' to know the 'who.' He would've recognized Orochimaru's work. If this is the first we are hearing of it, it isn't because it hasn't been noted."

"True," Sakura answers distantly, her eyes focusing on some nonexistent point in the air.

"What is it?" Tsunade narrows her eyes, recognizing the look on Sakura's face.

"It is a mimic of our seal," she murmurs. "It is channeling chakra. Orochimaru said it is continuous, but only to be released all at once in a predetermined jutsu…." She frowns. "But that would only require finite chakra stored indefinitely," she looks to her teacher. "It is channeling more than it needs, isn't it?"

"Depends," Tsunade lifts one shoulder.

Sakura's eyes go wide.

"No," she breathes. "It _is_ like our seal…it is looking for an outlet."

"An outlet?" Tsunade arches one honeyed eyebrow, still blonde when it should be white.

"Katsuyu," Sakura turns to the slug. "I need you to find some things out for me."

When the slug dispels, Sakura pushes away from the table and retrieves a stack of files. She is talking to more to herself than Tsunade as she goes through them, searching for something particular.

"I know for a fact that the one thing that Tenten fears more than anything is being trapped in her own mind" she breathes. "If she really did endure the equivalent of eleven years alone, it is a wonder that she hasn't suffered more ill effects." Her eyes grow wide. "What if they are delayed, and she becomes unstable? Maybe we should warn Kakashi? No," she shakes her head, lowering her voice. "Kakashi is safe. She is stable. If anything she is more stable than when she first…"

She trails off, but Tsuande hears '_when she first lost Neji. When she was first assigned. When she had her first life-altering injury.'_ – all of the 'whens' that have threaded their way through Tenten's life and into her file.

"Sakura-sama," Katsuyu says, popping back into the room. "I have done as you asked."

"And?" Sakura prompts.

The slug gives her report and Sakura's eyes are alight with triumph and disbelief.

Tsunade considers the files.

"This… all of this. It should be impossible."

"But it isn't," Sakura motions a hand over the evidence. "Orochimaru carved those pathways into her being; he generated and stole eleven years of her life force to fuel the jutsu. He just didn't count on the nature of the seal."

"Which is to protect its wielder," Tsunade fills in. "And since he created a closed system, the chakra couldn't be released from the seal. It could only backflow."

"Through the artificial channels he created," Sakura finishes. "It is something Orochimaru couldn't have predicted - the seal's propensity to mend injury isn't strictly physical."

Tsunade looks at her student, doubtfully, but cannot argue with the evidence.

"So the tattoo isn't actually growing," she taps a long, red nail on the table.

"No," Sakura shakes her head. "The tattoo isn't growing. It is healing. Those pathways were forged in greif and anger and loss and fear. And when those pathways are all retraced…" Sakura let the question hang between them.

Tsunade shrugs.

"Who knows?"

The silence settles between them for several moments.

"Well," Tsunade leans back in her seat. "Looks like I will be paying a visit to my old friend."

"Can we trust him?"

"Orochimaru?" Tsunade's eyebrows lift in amusement. "To an extent. If nothing else, I want to hear what he has to say about this. I will come back to the village in two weeks. If I do not return, check with Katsuyo to make sure he hasn't turned me into some kind of hideous experiment."

Sakura looks momentarily horrified, and Tsunade laughs too-loud at her own joke.

"Relax," she waves a hand dismissively. "He has better things to do than pester old ladies. Especially ones that helped heal his son last month."

"I never thought my child would be on a team with a son of Orochimaru," Sakura shakes her head. "If that doesn't show you how much Konoha has changed, than nothing will!"

"There is a caged bird seal being used to heal the hurt and bitterness of a heart that ached far longer than an artificial eleven years," Tsunade says, serious and solemn. "That tells you how much Konoha has changed."

And Sakura can only agree, and offer another silent thought of gratitude for her friend.


	40. xx: Shield

_I confess that writing the end of this story has been difficult, both because I want to make sure I wrap it up properly, and I have enjoyed this experiment. I can't thank you enough for coming along with me._

* * *

**Guardian**  
**xx. Shield**

* * *

Hinata has grown more perceptive as the years roll by.

"There are actually some Byakugan users that develop special abilities over time," his father tells him. "Heightened awareness, particularly keen insight born of being finely attuned to reading the chakra systems and body language... but I had always assumed the old stories about the ones who could see the dead to be an exaggeration."

"Himawari is unusually perceptive," Neji adds.

"So was Hinata," Hizashi nods. "It was said that the children could see the spirits of the departed, but lost the ability with age. Perhaps it just goes dormant."

"Or perhaps Hinata never truly lost it," Neji muses.

And now she not only watches the air where he is, but she watches Tenten. And she watches Kakashi.

And she is the one to determine the last piece of the puzzle.

She rolls her theory around in her head for several days before deciding who to approach with this information.

In the end, she goes directly to Orochimaru.

"Uzumaki Hinata?" The Sanin's eyebrow raises elegantly. "This is an unexpected pleasure. Have you come with news of the children?"

"Their mission is going well," she assures him. "But that is not why I have come."

"Oh?" he asks, sliding into a seat. "Then by all means. Enlighten me."

It has been many years since that night she and the others came – the night she learned about Tenten's sacrifice.

"I have come about Tenten," she says simply. "I…I need your advice."

Astonishment is not something Orochimaru has worn often, and it is alien to see on his unnaturally youthful features.

But when he learns what she has come to tell him, he exchanges it for a deeply thoughtful expression.

She watches him carefully.

"You do not seem to be surprised."

"I am not," he makes an elegant gesture with hands too unmarred to belong to one that has done the things he has done.

He tells her of his discussions with Sakura and Tsunade.

"I suspected that the 'tattoo' as we've been calling it was nearing completion. I did not suspect that it was drawing from any external resources. And you are certain of this?"

"Yes," she nods once. "I've seen it. The seal is drawing energy from Kakashi. But…" she hesitates, choosing her words carefully. "But I do not think it is causing him harm."

"Oh?" he arches an eyebrow.

"I see no depletion of chakra, or adverse effects. If anything, it appears to be a benefit to Kakashi."

"Interesting," he hums. "Well then," he stands. "I suppose I need to make arrangements to travel to Konoha."

Two weeks later, he stands on the edge of the training ground, watching from the shadows.

"What is he up to?" Obito wonders out loud.

"For now, he is just watching," Neji answers, but he is no more trustful than his companion.

The green of the tattoo is vibrant across her skin as she trains in the sun.

It winds over sinew and muscle and scar and bone, another brand of the warrior she has become.

She makes no effort to hide the tattoo, even on the few occasions she is in the public eye.

She finishes an exercise and swipes the back of her arm across her forehead

"How long are you going to stand there?" she asks, shouldering her bo staff.

"I was going to wait until you finished," Orochimaru shrugs, stepping out of the periphery. "I did not wish to interrupt you."

She eyes him easily, and Neji still wonders at the sight.

Had anyone told him as a young man that anyone in the village ever would allow Orochimaru this close to them while inside of Konoha without raising an alarm, he would not have believed it.

But while they are not friends, she does not greet him as an enemy.

Tenten raises her eyebrows, inviting Orochimaru to state his business.

"Ah," his eyes rove over the green swirls on her skin. "So it has grown again."

"Yes," she glances at her bare arms. "Not as fast as it used to, but it still changes."

"I suspect it is almost done. At least with this phase."

"Phase?" she frowns. "What phase?"

"There is a small, medic center deep in the Hokage Memorial," he looks beyond her to the seven faces watching over the village from their perch in the stone. "It is intended for emergency use only, but it is maintained and regularly inspected. I want you and Kakashi to meet me there tomorrow. Early."

"Not going to happen," she shrugs. "This isn't his business."

"I assumed you'd say that," he says, lazily flicking his eyes over her. "That is why I approached him first. Until then, Tenten."

He vanishes, leaving her to frown at empty air.

Pakkun finds her about an hour later, and delivers her orders. Realizing she can do nothing about the situation, she swallows her sigh and sends back word that she will be there.

When she enters the room and finds Orochimaru and Kakashi waiting, she can't help but feel suspicious. When she notices Hinata, Tsunade, and Sasuke there, she is _beyond_ suspicious.

Neji places two firm hands on her shoulders and tries to reassure her.

"You've faced worse," he teases her. "Listen to what they have to say."

He doesn't imagine the tiny smile or the shift in her chakra as she eyes everyone in the room and drawls "It's been a while since I was the last person to know about something."

And Neji can't help but think how wonderful it is to hear her say something so pedestrian so honest so Tenten as to make his being warm.

And when it is all over, and she is standing alone in the sealed training ground and staring up at the stars, he thinks she has found a sort of peace.

Kakashi finds her, as he always does.

"Your position ended long ago," his words are quiet. Gentle. "You are free to go wherever you like – do whatever you want now, Tenten. We all trust you to be careful with your life. I trust you."

"I told you a long time ago, my life is not my own."

"But it is, Tenten."

She meets his gaze unflinchingly.

"It is my choice?"

"Yes."

She eyes him for a long time.

When she speaks, it is softly, as if the weight of her words might drop through the air, if given half a chance.

"For years, I begged for death. I longed to return to Neji's side in the only way I knew I had left to return to him." She gives her head a small shake. "But he wouldn't have wanted me to join him that way. No, I am content to live as long as I can protect those precious to me."

Both Neji and Kakashi hold their breath as she stands a little taller, and her chin takes on that tell-tale stubborn tilt.

"My heart hasn't been mine to give since I was twelve. But if my life is not my own, Kakashi," she is fearless in her quiet, "it is because I have given it to you."

And he finds he has no words to say.

And she understands.

"I love Neji. I always will. When the time comes to return to his side, I will welcome it."

Perhaps something flickers behind Kakashi's eyes – something like understanding and regret and acceptance and pride and a few other things better left undefined – because she takes both of his hands in her own.

"Until then," she vows, her hands are small and rough and strong in his, "I will be your shield. I will stand between you and anyone foolish enough to stand against you, just as I have these many years."

"And that is your choice?" he asks.

"It is."

And he holds her to himself, then, and she not only allows but also returns the gesture.

And as Neji watches them stand as both two alone and two together, he is struck by the realization that this woman is both his past and his future, and the only reliable constant in either.

And it humbles his heart.

* * *

_Your feedback is so important friends, and what has kept this story from being abandoned. I read every review, every comment, every tag- thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. - GL_


	41. XX: Polaris

_This is the final chapter of 'Kunoichi,' and the last official 'chapter' of the story. The conclusion to both stories is in the next installment 'Dovetail.' _

* * *

**Kunoichi**  
**XX. Polaris**

* * *

He doesn't tell her how advanced his condition is.

She knows from their visits to Sakura that there is little to be done, but that he is otherwise healthy.

It is something known to plague shinobi in their advanced years; his chakra system so long overused has developed a rare cancer. It has only been seldom observed, and recorded instances of shinobi living long enough for the condition to become a serious concern are scarce. However, in these times of peace it is a growing problem with the aging - and sometimes not-so-aging - population.

Sakura is convinced that there is a pathogenic aspect to the disease, and studies it relentlessly. Knowing that her longtime-friend-and-sensei is affected is enough to secure her hours in the laboratory, and pouring over research.

But he hasn't let it change how he lives his life.

These last months, they have traveled the Land of Waterfalls, and have managed to keep their identities secret.

Neither of them is young anymore.

It has been no less than twenty years since she was first assigned to him, but neither wears their age. Kakashi jokes that having always had white hair is an advantage – no one can say he is growing older or graying.

Tenten isn't sure if it is the seal or genetics – she has no family to consult – but she has very little gray in her hair, and if the lines around her eyes are a little deeper, it is because she has learned to laugh again.

They share a false name and a room and a bed at the small inn, and wander through the quaint village together. Tenten buys a gift for Metal Lee, as always, and another for Himawari. They both pick something for Bolt and Sarada, and even Mitsuki. Tenten seals the gifts in scrolls and Kakashi packs them away.

He tries to hide the blood he coughs into tissues, but she knows him too well now.

"How long?" she asks.

"A year? Months?" he shrugs. "No way of knowing, really."

"Should we return to the village?"

"I am where I want to be," he puts a hand over hers. "Indulge an old man."

"Baka," she chides, but there is no edge in her words.

"You will return to the village?" he asks, and she knows he doesn't mean with him.

"Are those your final orders?" she returns.

"I am going the one place I don't want you to follow," he chuckles. "Not yet. Someone has to stay and keep an eye on the village."

"Then I will be your eyes," she promises.

The stars are brilliant in the sky that night.

In what felt like it had been anther life, her hobby had been fortune telling, giving her an intimate familiarity with the patterns and movements of the night skies.

She long ago stopped trying to scry the future in the stars, - the day she knew her fate was sealed and her only future was death – compartmentalizing that knowledge to navigational purposes only.

But tonight, she fixes her eyes on the star she long ago decided is Neji.

"_Wait for me. Just a little longer_," her heart beseeches the steady point of light firm in the night sky. "_I still have some things to finish."_

Not two weeks later, Kakashi sits with her, and his breathing is ragged.

"Months?" she asks.

"Maybe less," he admits.

She caresses his cheek fondly, and he sighs. "I am sorry," he apologizes. "I do not wish to leave you."

"I'll be alright," she promises, and he draws her tightly against himself.

They are still several days from Konoha when he collapses.

They are miles from help, and she has no way to transport him safely.

"Can you summon Pakkun?" she asks, relegating the panic that wants to seep into her voice to the back of her heart. "We can send the pack for help."

Kakashi barely manages to nod, and does not need to bite his thumb for the blood to activate the summons.

The pack of dogs surrounds them, and Pakkun's eyes are wide with worry.

"We need help," she says quickly. "You and Bull stay with Kakashi – the others, fan out and look for help."

The pack has long learned that she is one of their own, and does not question her.

"Right," Pakkun straightens up as much as he can. "You heard her," he calls to the other dogs. "Fan out!"

They are gone in a flash, and Pakkun turns a worried eye to her.

She puts a kind hand to Kakashi's head and checks his breathing.

A rustling in the bushes catches her attention, and she is immediately on her feet, standing between Kakashi and whatever might be approaching.

A single white snake glides into the splotches of moonlight that filter through the trees, eyeing her carefully.

"Call him," the snake hisses.

And Tenten reaches into the pouch at her hip and pulls out the one scroll she has never opened.

She is surprised Orochimaru comes directly.

"It's Kakashi," she wastes no time in conversation.

He moves quickly, his serpentine eyes scanning over the former Hokage.

"Your Uchiha Sakura can help him," Orochimaru says, keeping his eye on them both. "If we can make it in time."

"Can he be moved?" Tenten asks.

"He has to be," Orochimaru gives a small shrug. "Or he will die."

He ignores her glower and summons a giant serpent.

"Sasuke-kun's hawk would be more convenient," he helps Tenten adjust Kakashi. "But this should do. I have already sent word to Konoha of our arrival. There is no need for additional passengers," he slides dismissive eyes over the small, stubborn dog.

"Pakkun stays. Bull," she instructs. "Round up the others. Follow us."

She adjusts Kakashi in her arms, and the snake begins to race toward Konoha.

He is resting, eyes closed, breathing shallow. Pakkun places two small paws on his chest and studies his face before sitting back by his side.

"It would be faster if we could risk a reverse summons," he muses, "but I do not know how that would affect him."

And she gets an idea.

"You and the dogs can get back to the village quickly by yourselves?"

"Easily," he gives a pert nod. "But not with Kakashi."

"I need you to go to Konoha," she says firmly. "Several of you go find Sakura. The rest of you need to go where I will tell you."

Pakkun doesn't look sure.

"Please, Pakkun," her voice is gentle and thick. "I promise. I will never ask another thing of you – Just trust me. This once."

The dog flicks a look over her and his friend before giving a single, grim nod.

"Thank you," she scratches his ears fondly in the way that he loves but refuses to let her do in front of the other dogs. "Take these," she gives him two small scrolls. "One for Hinata. One for Sakura."

"Understood," he lets her seal the scrolls into his clothing – a technique she and Kakashi devised over the years.

The small dog disappears, and moments later so does the rest of his pack.

Orochimaru is watching her seriously and she is certain he knows exactly what she is planning.

"You know where to meet us, right?"

"There is no guarantee this will work, Tenten," he warns.

"But it probably will, won't it, Orochimaru."

There is something like regret in his eyes when he says "Yes. Probably."

She adjusts Kakashi in her lap, and his eyes flutter open even as his head lolls into the crook of her shoulder.

"We're going to get you home," her voice is gentle as her fingers trace the outline of his cheek.

"We?" he asks weakly. He just makes out Orochimaru's form, backlit by a sky brilliant with stars.

"Where are we?"

"On our way back to Konoha," she prevents him from shifting his position unnecessarily. "You and I – we are going to take a shortcut. Orochimaru has already let Sakura know we are on our way."

Kakashi shakes his head. "Too far," his tone taciturn and accepting. "Not enough time."

"It isn't too far," she promises. "I can get us there. With help. Rest now,"

Kakashi gives a weary nod of the head and his eyes drift closed.

She looks up at Orochimaru and he gives her a slight, resigned nod.

A dagger appears in her hand – thin and sharp enough to slice through flesh and bone with no resistance. The way she offers it to him with her forearm angled upward leaves him in no doubt of her intentions.

She promised Kakashi she would not take her own life.

She is asking Orochimaru to do it for her.

So that her body will return to Konoha.

And Sakura can save Kakashi.

Orochimaru waves a hand over the knife and it disappears. She begins to protest, but he silences her objections with a single, upheld finger.

A small snake appears in his palm, and she understands immediately.

The serpent has a potent venom that will both ebb her life and drain her chakra, hopefully triggering her final jutsu quickly. On the other hand, it will allow her to maintain muscle control and consciousness longer, giving her a better chance at securing Kakashi, and possibly transport him to the hospital before succumbing to the poison.

She gives a small and grateful nod.

She adjusts her hold on Kakashi, and the quick flinch of her muscles bring him just to the surface of consciousness.

"Are you alright?" he asks.

"Fine," she soothes, even as the small snake sublimates into smoke, and the venom seeps into her body from the two puncture wounds at her ankle.

She admires that Orochimaru even considered a convenient location for the bite, and gives him a grateful smile.

There is no pain – the snake numbs its victims. It is reputedly one of the most pleasant deaths one can have from a snake bite. It is said that the body feels lighter and free and the victim eventually succumbs to a pleasant sleep from which they never wake.

"Tenten," Kakashi eyes her keenly. "What is it."

"Nothing," she already feels the first pulls on her chakra reserves. "We are going home."

They have faced more than twenty years together now, and he knows her well enough to know there is something she is choosing not to say.

But he trusts her.

He pulls his mask down to better bring the cold night air into his lungs.

She traces the familiar planes of his face with gentle fingertips.

"It will be alright," he assures her, and her smile is small and secret.

"Yes. It will."

They meet somewhere in the middle, the taste of goodbye bittersweet on their lips.

And her heart grows warm.

His hand rests on the cloth above that damning mark carved into her skin so very long ago, and the gentle flicker of heat dances beneath his palm.

Green light glows dimly through the fabric under his fingers, seeping into the skin of his palm and sliding up his wrist.

And the verdant lines of the tattoo spiral out from their center, and begin to wind up his arm.

There is no rhombus on her forehead, but the markings are so similar to those he has seen in the past, Orochimaru is taken aback. But unlike Tsunade and Sakura's markings that wind over their bodies and then onto those to whom they chose to impart chakra, the green lines swirling through her skin are alive and uncoiling to leave her body and wind onto Kakashi's.

Neither appears to notice.

And when the last of the tattoo has wound from her skin and sinks into his, and they are both awash in a green light.

And Orochimaru watches as ink-black venom dribbles out of the snakebite before the puncture wound disappears completely. Kakashi's breathing becomes less shallow, and he winds a hand into her hair.

And the color returns to his face, and every ounce of light pours from her and into him, and years and pain and ache are pushed out of his being.

"_Neji_," she thinks, as she begins to feel the tug at the center of her being. "_Guide us, please."_

And she presses her forehead to his, and has just enough time to give Orochimaru a grateful nod before wrapping her arms tightly around Kakashi.

There is light and cold and a blur of stars and then nothing.

And Orochimaru is left to look up to the silent skies, alone.

"So," he muses, and since there is no one to hear but the moon and stars, he permits the grace notes of sympathy and surprise and respect to slip in between his words.

"She has finally returned home."

And he spares a rare and kindly thought for the brave heart that will fall silent before dawn.


	42. Dovetail

**Kunoichi and Guardian**  
**Dovetail**

* * *

She is suspended in the place between heartbeats.

There is no breath in her lungs or strength in her limbs.

She is nothing.

There is nothing.

Nothing but suspension in an ambient darkness.

And then something plucks at the string that gathers and ties her consciousness together. The vibrations hum and resonate with her and she becomes capable of thought again.

And she has a realization dug up from some long buried cellular memory – it is like being born, but in reverse.

And the vibrations hum and sing and resonate with her and through her and around her and in her until she feels every subparticle of her being dancing to the thrumming cadence.

And the rhythm becomes more constant – more steady – more powerful.

And the vibrations hum and sing and soar and resonate with her and through her and within her until they overlap into a steady pulse.

A heartbeat.

And this is strange, because she knows that her heart stopped beating.

She knows that it stopped mere seconds after his name escaped on her last breath.

She knows that was just after she collapsed on the sweet grass having given everything she was for Konoha.

She knows she knelt at his grave where his name was hewn in the permanence and irrevocability of stone, and traced her fingers over the inscription bookending his life from the day of his birth to the day death came far too soon.

She knows that before she knelt, she stood over the grass knowing he lied buried directly below her feet, in restful repose, and she accepted totality and finality of his sacrifice.

She knows she arrived at that place in a flash of light carrying a heart glad and weary but strangely light from a life well and truly lived to that place of stone and fire.

And she is certain that the peace in her soul slipped through the grass to assure him that she was fine, and she would join him soon.

She had gone to his grave.

But where she is now, she cannot guess.

And suddenly everything around her stops and there is only the slow thrum of a heart that should not be beating, and silence.

And she waits and listens with every molecule of her being.

"You're late."

And her eyes snap open and she sucks in air she knows her lungs do not need.

And the person that looks back at her isn't someone she has seen. There are thin streaks of gray in his long hair, and he is taller than she remembers. But his smile is amused, and his ghost-gray gaze so familiar, that suddenly she knows the impossible.

"Neji," she breathes, and stares at him, feeling the pressure of tears behind her eyes, but refusing to let them fall.

He and holds out a hand to her.

She slips tentative fingers in his, and they are warm and steady and familiar.

And she looks into the eyes she would know anywhere, and this time when his name comes to her lips there is no incredulity.

And she throws her arms around his neck and cries into his collar before cupping his face in her hands and kissing him with a fervor that spoke of a fear of him disappearing at any moment.

And the years fall away from them as two halves of a shared heart that should not be beating fall into a synchronized rhythm.

And when she finally clings to him and lets the tears fall and he presses a kiss to her forehead his words come back to her.

"You said I was late," she sniffs.

"Mm," he agrees. "Kakashi must've worn off on you."

"And…" she thinks, "every other time… you said I was early?"

"As expected of a member of Team Gai," he teases her.

She steps back and looks at him, and he is just as she remembers – the gray is gone from his hair, and he looks just as he did before he died – except his cursed seal is gone. Reflexively, she tries to hook a finger in her own shirt to check for the mark above her heart, but her clothes have changed. And her hands are less marred.

"It isn't there," he assures her.

"It…it isn't?" she asks.

"No," he shakes his head. "You completed the seal. It is no longer a part of you."

"So Orochimaru was right?" she cocks an eyebrow at him. "It wasn't finished?"

"The seal stored chakra as it was designed to do," Neji explains. "Once it stored what it needed for your final jutsu, the excess chakra began to backflow along the channels created by Orochimaru."

"Yes, but why?" Tenten asks. "We never figured that out."

"Naruto," Neji says simply. "He rekindled the light in you, and it changed the nature of the seal. It became a mark of healing. That bond extended to Kakashi. You gradually absorbed and sealed his grief as well. That is why your seal allowed itself to extend to him. It healed you both. But your desire to help Kakashi pushed everything over to him. Essentially," Neji brushes a stray hair from her face, "you gave him what remained of your life and chakra."

"And that activated the final jutsu," Tenten reasons, "and it brought me to your grave."

"Yes," Neji dips his head. "You gave up your life for his."

The _'as you promised'_ hangs unspoken between them.

Tenten suspects she should feel guilt or awkwardness. It is clear that Neji knows all about her mortal life, and therefore knows of the life she spent with Kakashi.

But she feels nothing but peace.

She is back with Neji and she is finally complete in a way she never dreamed she could be.

But still she asks, "And… that is alright?"

"Yes," he winds his fingers in hers. "It is alright."

"And," she hesitates, her many encounters with him suddenly returning to memory, "….and…I am allowed to stay?"

His grin is slow and sure.

"There is nothing left in this universe that can take you away from me. We will never be separated again."

And her entire being becomes nothing but light and air and joy and she embraces him as tightly as she can.

And he holds her just as tightly, and finally says the words he has been waiting so long to say.

"Welcome home, Tenten."

* * *

Kakashi wakes in the hospital and sits upright with a sharp breath.

Sakura is waiting for him at the foot of the bed.

But her expression tells him all he needs to know.

"Tenten?"

Sakura gives a slow shake of her head.

He falls back against his pillow.

"Her seal was a copy of ours," Sakura explains, her voice thick with some emotion. "Somehow, she transferred all of it – all of the healing and her stored chakra and her lifeforce – to you. It drained her enough that the final jutsu was activated, … But she must've managed to divert her path to bring you here. She stayed long enough to make sure you were stable. I only left the room to bring her water, and she was gone."

"_I'm going now," she said, her voice calm_. "_Thank you. Thank you for everything."_

_She brushed her fingers against his face, and gently pulled down his mask. The shared a final kiss, and Kakashi felt a strange peace settle in his bones. With an infinite tenderness, she replaced his mask and kissed his forehead. _

_And then she was gone._

Kakashi blinks at the ceiling, not sharing the memory.

"Whatever she did, healed you completely. In fact," Sakura flips open a chart and hands it to him. "You have no health concerns whatsoever. She gave you back several years of life, at least."

"And…"

"And the condition we have been watching is no longer a concern," Sakura blinks away tears. "Your blood work shows that you have new antibodies, unlike anything I've ever seen. There is a good chance that you've just handed us the key to defeating that condition completely."

"Have you found her?"

"Not yet," Sakura shakes her head. "But she left this."

She hands him the scroll Pakkun gave to her.

He scans the contents, a faint smile tugging at his lips.

Instructions.

Instructions on what to do if something happened to her body – how to seal it – how to recover it – how she wished to be buried….

Kakashi scans it quickly.

And the realization slips over him like an unexpected patch of sunshine sliding between passing clouds.

"I know where she is."

Sakura doesn't try to stop him.

In moments he arrives.

It takes him a beat to realize what he is seeing.

His mind doesn't initially register the distortion of the topography, altered as it is by morning mist and the illusory light of dawn.

As he draws closer, he makes out the figure resting peacefully, fingers brushing the name carved in stone.

He doesn't expect to see Pakkun lying next to her.

"I watched over her," Pakkun sits up slowly, stiff from the cold ground. "She had each of us stationed around Konoha – she wasn't sure where the two of you would arrive. I delivered the scrolls and then came here directly." He looks at her sadly and then back to Kakashi. "I had a feeling she'd show up here sooner or later."

Kakashi gives a hum of agreement.

"She went quietly," Pakkun's voice is subdued and fond. "She made me promise to look after you," he snorts, "like I haven't been doing that your whole life."

"Thank you, Pakkun."

And the small dog nods gravely and dispels, recognizing his friend's need to be alone.

Kakashi kneels and places a gentle hand on the familiar brow, now cold, and places a gentle kiss on lips smiling even in death.

And he is surprised and humbled to find there is no grief in his being – only a subtle gratitude and pride that she has finally faced the last of her demons.

She has finally visited Neji's grave.

She is buried beside him two days later. Hinata insisted on this, and even if there had been any objections (there were none) no one would have dared to oppose her.

Uzumaki Hinata is meticulous in carrying out her friend's last requests, and does the work of settling her estate. Tenten remembered all of her friends and their children in her instructions, and donated generously and anonymously to the care of veterans and children, and specifically to ensuring Maito Gai was taken care of.

Hinata is still one of only several people that know anything of her personal relationship with Kakashi – most knew her to be a loyal bodyguard. ANBU knew her to be his shadow. But Hinata understands the complex layers and strings that brought them together over the years, and is discreet in gathering up the things Tenten wanted him to have.

Her ANBU mask is retired, and the kunoichi known as the Konoha Dragon becomes the stuff of legend.

The seasons change and the months slide by.

He visits her every day, tracing her name on both her grave and memorial stone. He thanks her, and he thanks the man resting beside her, for he is certain it was Neji that got them to the hospital.

And he finds the final blessing she has given him is not the many more years Sakura tells him he will live, but the lightness in spirit he has felt since the wind gently bid him her final goodbye in the first whispers of that last dawn.

There are no regrets.

There is no grief.

There is no pain.

There is only humble gratitude and a small bouquet of flowers left at the base of the memorial.

And he thinks, with a hand to his own heart, that of all of the things she left behind, the most important was hope.

And he lives his days to see the future they all fought so hard to protect grow and blossom and flourish.

And when it is his turn to sleep in the earthen embrace of Konoha, she is one of the faces that greets him.

Obito and Rin tease him for being late, and Minato and Kushina are beaming while Jiraiya laughs too loud, and his Father says he is proud, and Lord Third and Asuma nod with satisfaction, and Gai challenges him to an eternity of laps, and he catches her eye and they share a knowing smile while Neji shakes his head fondly.

And he extends a hand to Neji, and does not need to speak the thanks written on his heart.

And his own light shines bright and clear as she puts her hand over theirs, and welcomes him home.

* * *

**Epilogue**

"Tell us another, Kasan!"

"Not tonight," Himiwari's great-granddaughter chuckles. "Into your beds and lights out."

The children offer a variety of protests, but their eyes are heavy and their yawns are wide.

She tucks the youngest into her bed,

"Are the stories true?"

Her mother brushes her forehead fondly.

"All stories have some truth to them," she tucks the blankets more tightly around her. "The Nine-Tails, The Dragon that protected Konoha, the Beautiful Green Beast, The princess whose prince was cursed to hate, the painter who learned to feel, -

"And the Kunoichi?"

"Ah yes," her mother smiles. "The Kunoichi and her Guardian."

"Tell it to me?"

"Not tonight," her mother chides gently, well aware of her daughter's delaying tactics. She smiles and kisses the girl goodnight.

And the little girl peers into the moonlight with eyes wide and innocent and waiting.

And when the woman shimmers in the air before her, she is unafraid.

"Tell me the story," she mumbles.

"Alright," the woman sits on her bed and weaves the story of the kunoichi with a broken heart and the guardian spirit trying to return to her. "And finally, after a lifetime of trying to find one another, the fearless Kunoichi was finally reunited with her faithful Guardian."

"And the shadows?" the girl prompts with a yawn.

"The darkness never returned," the woman tucks the covers more tightly around her. "And they spent the rest of their days together and happy."

"That's my favorite part," the little girl sighs happily, drifting off to sleep.

And Tenten looks up to where Neji sits, listening, and they share a fond smile as she admits,

"Mine, too."

* * *

**~*Fin*~**

* * *

_I can't thank you enough for coming on this journey with me. With a little heart full of grattitude,_

_ \- Giada_


End file.
